The Lewis and Clark Expedition along the Missouri River was commissioned in 1803 and undertaken in in 1804-1806. Meriwether Lewis initially met William Clark because of his being court martialed. While serving as a frontier army officer in 1795, a young Meriwether Lewis was court-martialed for allegedly challenging a lieutenant to a duel during a drunken dispute. The 21-year-old was found not guilty of the charges, but his superiors decided to transfer him to a different rifle company to avoid any future incidents. His new commander turned out to be William Clark.
Lewis and Clark got the firearms for their expedition and other supplies from the United States Arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia), the same arsenal that abolitionist leader John Brown would later raid in his abortive Oct. 1859 slave uprising.
In 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition camped for a time at the confluence of three rivers that combine to form the Missouri River. Two of these rivers, the Madison and the Gallatin, rise within the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. From this point, the Missouri flows north and then eastward across Montana into North Dakota. Near Buford, North Dakota, the Missouri is joined by its largest tributary, the Yellowstone, which also rises in Yellowstone National Park.
Only one animal completed the entire Lewis and Clark Expedition, going both there and back - Lewis’s black Newfoundland dog, Seaman, which he bought for $20 in Pittsburgh.
The St. Louis statue called The Captains Return used to sit at the foot of the west end of the Eads Bridge depicted Lewis and Clark and Seaman together, returning from their expedition.
The Captain's Return - Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis — see the picture; the Mississippi has flooded enough to cover the entire statue, including the upraised hat.
Renovated Lewis & Clark statue back on St. Louis riverfront — the statue was removed, cleaned and restored, and relocated a few yards from its former location at the Eads Bridge to higher ground near the Gateway Arch.
Captains Courageous is one of many of author Rudyard Kipling’s works to be adapted for stage and film. Numerous works were adapted multiple times, including his first novel The Light that Failed and his popular Jungle Book. The 1975 adaptation of his story The Man who Would Be King received 4 Academy Award nominations. For the 1937 film version of Captains Courageous, Spencer Tracy won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
In the movie, The Man who Would Be King (1975), the scenes in the Khyber Pass of Pakistan were filmed in the Todgha Gorge of Morocco. The Google Images of them look dramatically different.
Khyber Pass Pakistan — https://goo.gl/YhPSV4
Todgha Gorge Morocco — https://goo.gl/UfcGvP
In the 1939 Cary Grant / Victor McLaglen / Douglas Fairbanks Jr. film Gunga Din, with Sam Jaffe as the title character, the Alabama Hills in California’s Sierra Nevada represented the Khyber Pass. The film also depicted Thuggee murder rituals at their secret temple long before Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The Khyber Pass, in northwest Pakistan and on the border with Afghanistan, has been an important trade route between Central Asia and South Asia and a vital strategic military choke point for various states that came to control it. The pass connects Jalalabad, Afghanistan to Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan (gMap — Google Maps) and it is traversed by the N-5 National Highway, the longest national highway in Pakistan.
During World War II concrete “dragon’s teeth” (tank obstacles) were erected on the valley floor of the Khyber Pass due to British fears of a German tank invasion of British India.
The British built the Khyber Pass Railway after World War I for strategic reasons. Now called the Khyber train safari, it is a tourist train, and it is the only passenger line in Pakistan still operating steam engines.
The 1953 film King of the Khyber Rifles, starring Tyrone Power, has essentially nothing to do with the novel by Talbot Mundy, although it was shot in the same Alabama Hills location, and has much of the same plot, as Gunga Din.
Film rights for Stephen King’s short story Children of the Corn were originally optioned by Hal Roach Studios, and King wrote a script based on his work. Hal Roach executives did not want to use King’s script and George Goldsmith was hired to rewrite it. Goldsmith says King’s script started with 35 pages of Burt and Vicky arguing in a car, so he decided to tell the story visually through the eyes of two new characters, children Job and Sarah. King was unhappy with the changes but Hal Roach went with Goldsmith. Hal Roach eventually sold the project to New World Pictures who decided to go with Goldsmith’s script, although they tried to remove his name from the credits in favor of King, who threatened a lawsuit if his name was used.
The Alabama Hills, near Lone Pine CA and some 200 miles N of Los Angeles (gMap, https://goo.gl/XLSoKi), are a popular filming location for television and movie film productions, especially Westerns set in an archetypical “rugged” environment. Since the early 1920s, 150 movies and about a dozen television shows have been filmed here, including Tom Mix films, Hopalong Cassidy films, The Gene Autry Show, The Lone Ranger and Bonanza. Meanwhile Classics such as Gunga Din, The Walking Hills, Yellow Sky, Springfield Rifle, The Violent Men, Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott “Ranown” westerns, part of How the West Was Won, and Joe Kidd. In the late 1940s and early 50s the area was also a popular location for the films of B-western actor Tim Holt.
Of the three actors who portrayed MASH’s Trapper John McIntyre, only the original, Elliot Gould from the movie, is still alive. Wayne Rogers from the TV show MASH died in 2015, and Pernell Roberts, (who portrayed Adam Cartwright in Bonanza) from the TV show Trapper John MD died in 2010.
NM
Trapper Creek, Alaska (gMap, Google Maps) is a town near Talkeetna about 100 miles N of Anchorage and is just south of Denali State Park (gMap, Google Maps). It is in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, whose largest town is Wasilla. Denali State Park is located on the south eastern border of Denali National Park and Preserve formerly known as Mt. McKinley National Park, a much larger and more popular park in the area. The Kesugi Ridge Trail in Denali State Park is very popular trail known for its incredible views of the Alaska Range and tundra around it. The trail is 28 miles long one way, or 56 miles out-and-back. It offers excellent views of Denali, however, due to the weather conditions Denali creates in itself, there is only a 30% chance of seeing the mountain unobscured by clouds. But if there is good weather, and with 3-4 days to increase the odds, the views of Denali along this trail are richly rewarding.
gImages, Kesugi Ridge Trail — https://goo.gl/26EVxv
The Matanuska Glacier is located about two hours north of Anchorage, AK. It is the largest glacier in America that is accessible by car, and one of the few that you can easily hike on. It is 27 miles long and 4 miles wide, descending 12,000 feet to the terminus. It is also the source for the Matanuska River, a largely braided river that travels 75 miles to the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet. The high grade of marijuana grown in the Matanuska Valley is known as Matanuska Thunder Fuck.
A bill has been introduced into the New Jersey senate to make recreation marijuana legal.
That MJ, Matanuska Thunder Fuck, will have to look for that when I’m there!
The Matanuska Glacier is the largest glacier accessible by car in the United States — as Chefguy says. It flows about 1 foot per day.