We were sailing the most peaceful segment of our week-long, socially-distant getaway. Two books overtook the reins of my mind every free second—when I wasn’t driving the car or before I fell asleep at night. Idleness had found an objective. No worry seeped into an absorbed mind.
Dawn 
Morning coffee 
Mystical Silver Lake 
We drove south toward Idaho this morning, starting the most historic, the most scenic drive, also my favorite day of our vacation. Mountains enlarged beyond Wisdom, Montana when our cherished companion, the babbling, whispering, and calming Salmon river, joined our journey, leering at us through the window, forcing us to make unscheduled stops along the road.
Our first formal destination involved learning about Sacajawea while walking this picturesque museum’s “outside trail” at Salmon, Idaho: featuring tipis, outdoor schools, and above everything else, Sacajawea. At a time riddled with wars and bloodshed, massacres and deep mistrust, the young, free-spirited, native American woman, mother of an infant, formed deep friendship with Lewis and helped complete their voyage from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark sailed on Missouri river based on the conviction it would flow into the Pacific until they hit the Rockies. They termed the Rockies Gates of Mountain because they were impenetrable. Sacajawea helped serving as a messenger and a translator with the local Indian tribes. Two tales circulate on Wikipedia, only one the museum believed from the Lewis and Clark journals, which claims Sacajawea died at the tender age of twenty-five years from an infection she protracted during childbirth. The signed adoption papers for her infant to Lewis and the journal serve as proof. The museum shunned other stories that she escaped an unhappy, arranged marriage and lived a long life till the age of ninety-five because she wouldn’t abandon her children.
After appreciating the efforts to preserve this precious sliver of history, we set camp at the Salmon river and ate lunch. I even recorded its whispers forever in a video. I wish we could make it all the way to Stanley, Idaho, but restfulness (along with wandering) was our supreme goal. So, we turned around midway to Challis and headed to Lemhi Pass up a gravel mountain, another Lewis and Clark stop, a trading post where they had camped and written into their journal. Not a soul accompanied the five of us atop the Lemhi Pass allowing us a strangely peaceful, quietly breezy, and blatantly ginormous three-sixty-degree view of the region.
Salmon River picnic 
Roadside stop 
Lemhi Pass 
A dust cloud flew behind our car, the mud coating our rearview window, as we drove on gravel toward Montana—the sights, the lakes, the mountains, I’ll not even attempt to describe. Let’s leave it at: we absorbed stories from years ago, idled in pristine nature, and refilled our hearts with purpose.
Back at Anaconda, we helped ourselves to pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner. Hey, it’s our vacation; we’ll flip it as we wish.
The next morning, I’d worry about a vacation shortening with each breathing second; I’d worry about my never-ending mistakes, but today was prebooked by worry-free, untainted memories in the making.
Trivia:
Thomas Jefferson had sent Lewis and Clark to explore the west in order to expand. He’d asked congress for $2500; records indicate about $50, 000 was the actual expenditure.
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