Today we visited the site of Ft. Clatsop, near Astoria, Oregon. The Lewis and Clark party built the original fort in late 1805, and completed the palisade fence on New Years Day, 1806.During their 3-month stay, it rained almost every day. The weather was so miserable that they gave up in March and started the trip home earlier than they had intended.
For our visit today, the sun shone and the blue sky arched all around. Still, looking into the tiny rooms of the fort replica, we could get a feeling for the crowded, damp quarters the Corps of Discovery occupied almost 200 years ago. As one of the guests put it, "being here tells more about that long-ago winter than any amount of reading could portray".
