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Gates of the Rocky Mountains: Tourism is up 15 percent this year at these towering cliffs
was a glorious night; you felt you could touch the stars. Except for a logging road, the place was unaltered since Lewis?s time. Around the fire, we talked about why we loved our country. We sang patriotic songs?as the men of the expedition did? and imagined their optimism for our future.
We returned to Montana and the trail the next summer. That year, at the Gates of the Mountains, Stephenie got to spend more time with the gas boy, John Tubbs, son of Bob and Florence Tubbs, who ran the tour boats Pirogue and Sacajawea. She persuaded them to hire her to work behind the soda counter at the boat landing and to let her live with them at the Gates. The romance blossomed. The next year, John and Steph entered the University of Montana at Missoula, where they eventually earned master?s degrees: Steph in history, John in economics. On June 25, 1983, the anniversary of their meeting, they married in two 90-passenger tour boats tied together in the Missouri River at the Gates (one the bride?s boat, the other the groom?s) near where Lewis camped in 1805. I read aloud Lewis?s journal entry for the day, in which he gave the Gates their name. John and Steph live today in Helena, with our grandsons Alex and Riley. Our sons Barry and Hugh are also graduates of the University of Montana, and live _	in	Missoula and Helena. Barry
and Kis wife, Celeste, named
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Missouri River: Many stretches remain pristine
the gas boy at the dock. Later she informed Moira and me ?with deep conviction ? that our grandchildren were going to be bom and raised in Montana.
On the Fourth of July, we were at Lemhi Pass, where 15 of my students from the University of New Orleans joined us. It
SL LcJuis: The arch, a memorial to exploration, has lured 3.5 million visitors so far thisyear
our granddaughter Corina Sacajawea Ambrose.
Each summer on the trail brings its own distinctive memories. In 1993 we invited the smartest people we know to join us for a Missouri River trip, a July Fourth camp-out at Lemhi and a horseback crossing on the
Lolo Trail. I was getting ready to write ?Undaunted Courage? and wanted to know what questions popped into bright people?s minds after a day on the trail and a reading of the journals around the campfire. Among a dozen others were my college roommate, former Colorado governor Dick Lamm, and his wife, Dottie. Dick has more curiosity than any man I?ve known since Dwight Eisenhower. He and the others gave me exactly what I sought: good fellowship, shared hardships and never-ending questions.	,
??T Reading aloud: This summer my college-^f^. fraternity brothers John Holcomb and Chuck Bamham organized a reunion on the Missouri River. Fifty of us set out?20 of my classmates, along with wives, children and grandchildren?in 25 canoes. The camaraderie around the campfire, after a day of never-ending ?scenes of visionary enchantment,? as Lewis described the White Cliffs section of the river, was a wonderful thing.
I?m a storyteller by profession, and my idea of heaven is sitting around a fire after a day on the trail, reading aloud from the journals, sensing the 6-year-olds along with the 60-year-olds straining forward in the circle just a bit, so as not to miss anything.
As for our family, we have endured summer snowstorms, terrible thunderstorms in canoes and soaking rains on backpack trails. But what we remember most are the countless moments of exhilaration. We got to know one another, through shared laughter and tears, as the kids talked around the campfire about their daily triumphs and tragedies?and their dreams and fears.
The trail has drawn us back so many times because it is so accessible and, in many places, so unchanged. It stretches over two thirds of the country. Along the lower part of the Columbia River, there are dams, towns and cities; along the middle part of the Missouri, there are dams. But even there, on the rivers between the modem intrusions, you pretty much see what Lewis and Clark saw. All along the trail there are state parks, many of them on Lewis and Clark campsites. In Montana, from Fort Benton to the North Dakota border on the Missouri River, a distance of more than 300 miles, there are no towns at all?only a few ranches and a couple ofbridges. Otherwise, it is pristine. So are parts of the Lolo Trail. When you are out there on a four- or five-day trip, you get a whole new perspective on time, and on what most impressed Lewis and Clark, the vastness and grandeur of the American West.	?
CLOCKWrSE FROM TOP: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE (*). DAVE JACOBS?TONY STONE, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, ROBBIE MCCLAREN, COURTESY STEPHEN AMBROSE, ANDREW E. CIER
AUGUST 26, 1996 NEWSWEEK 147