Great Falls, Montana

We have spent the last three days in Great Falls, Montana. This wasn't necessarily by choice, but we needed a big enough place to get some warranty work done on our fifth wheel. (Nothing major, just irritating.) Since we knew we were going to be here a few days, we also had our mail forwarded from Portland. We haven't had mail for almost a month (didn't miss it much). Only seven pieces got forwarded, four of which we tossed out. There is a message there somewhere.

Anyway, Great Falls:

There is another exceptional Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center here. At Great Falls, the L & C Expedition of 1805 had to climb out of the Missouri River and drag/carry their boats and everything they had about 20 miles ("Portage", as one reads frequently) in order to circumvent a series of five impassable waterfalls that cascaded along this part of the river. Rough going.

The river is pretty here, wide and wooded on both sides, with tall white cliffs at places. The five waterfalls now each have their own hydroelectric dam...which makes them less impressive than when Merriweather Lewis first saw them, but still very pretty.

The Missouri River

Black Eagle Dam (and Falls)

Ryan Dam, Site of original "Great Falls"

Ryan Dam Power Plant, 1915

There is a great walking/biking trail along the Missouri, but it has been hot here, so we experienced most of it from inside the Interpretive Center. Great Falls is also the site of the shortest river in the world, the Roe River, all 210 feet of it.

We are staying at our first KOA Campground.  It's clean, and attractive, but more oriented to families with children, and a bit overpriced for our needs. Still, it has been an okay place to call home for a few days.

This morning, we went to the Malmstrom Air Force Base Museum. Malmstrom today is home to one of three active Minuteman missile installations, with 150 nuclear armed missiles poised in underground silos as a deterrent. We learned a lot about the whole capability. Really amazing.

The museum held special meaning to Jack, as Malmstrom AFB was headquarters for the Aircraft Control and Warning Radar network where he worked in the late 1960s in the Air Force. The network was disbanded in the 1980s, but the museum had a whole section on it, and artifacts including the 10,000 vacuum tube "computer" that he worked on.

For Jack, it was nostalgic, and extremely cool!

The SAGE network, initially deployed to connect radar bases around the country, was the first implementation of the military's ARPANET. The Internet grew out of it.

This whole cabinet contained 4,096 words of memory. Today, your iPhone contains BILLION times more memory.

Sage radar console: This is how aircraft were monitored in the 1960s.