Today we started with a teacher meeting. It gave me lots of ideas and fun new things to teach, but it isn't exactly interesting to read about. Usually these things are very long, and quite honestly kind of boring, but today's was a lot of fun. After the meeting we went out to Buffalo Jump State Park. A buffalo jump is a cliff where Native Americans would lure bison onto a grassy plain near a cliff. Once they got them where they wanted them the Indians would surprise the bison by charging them dressed as wolves or coyotes. The herd would begin to run and a few indians dressed as bison babies would start running for the cliff. At the last minute the indians would scramble down the cliff into pre-determined hiding holes while the herd of bison ran over the cliff to their deaths. The tribe then had food for a few months or up to a year. I will fill you in later on how they did the luring. The first thing I thought was that the cliff couldn't have been more than 6 feet high. I had forgotten about an optical illusion. Most people from areas where there is not a lot of flat open space have a hard time gauging distances once on an open plain. The hill was about 400 feet above the prairie. The cliffs anywhere from 30-80 feet high. Once I saw some people standing on top I got a sense of how big the place was. Then again when I hiked up the hill I got a real sense of how big if drop was.
After the buffalo jump we drove to a town called Fort Benton. This fort was built after Lewis and Clark in the 1840s. It has the oldest still-standing structure in Montana. It was one of the first forts in Montana and the town boasts that it is the birthplace of Montana because the business they did there was what put Montana on the map.
On the way back in to Great Falls we stopped at two of the falls. When Lewis and Clark came through here there were 7 cataracts. The Missouri river drops 600 feet in 17 miles and the area around Great Falls has some truly great falls. In the early 1900s they were all dammed up to create electricity, but they are still there. The first fall we saw was at Morony dam. There has been a lot of water this year and the spillway on the dam was releasing water at an enormous rate. In the picture the water flowing over the spillway is about 10 feet deep as it drops down. We finished the day at Ryan's Island which is an island in the river right below Ryan dam. This island is accessed by a cable bridge that sways ominously once you get about 1/3 of the way out, but the island really puts you in the middle of the waterfall action. The falling water cools of the air and fills it with water spray. It is always windy under the falls as the air gets rushing with the water. Since it got up to almost 90 degrees today this air conditioning provided by nature felt great. Unfortunately the sun was directly behind the falls, so my pictures aren't exactly award winning.
After the buffalo jump we drove to a town called Fort Benton. This fort was built after Lewis and Clark in the 1840s. It has the oldest still-standing structure in Montana. It was one of the first forts in Montana and the town boasts that it is the birthplace of Montana because the business they did there was what put Montana on the map. 
On the way back in to Great Falls we stopped at two of the falls. When Lewis and Clark came through here there were 7 cataracts. The Missouri river drops 600 feet in 17 miles and the area around Great Falls has some truly great falls. In the early 1900s they were all dammed up to create electricity, but they are still there. The first fall we saw was at Morony dam. There has been a lot of water this year and the spillway on the dam was releasing water at an enormous rate. In the picture the water flowing over the spillway is about 10 feet deep as it drops down. We finished the day at Ryan's Island which is an island in the river right below Ryan dam. This island is accessed by a cable bridge that sways ominously once you get about 1/3 of the way out, but the island really puts you in the middle of the waterfall action. The falling water cools of the air and fills it with water spray. It is always windy under the falls as the air gets rushing with the water. Since it got up to almost 90 degrees today this air conditioning provided by nature felt great. Unfortunately the sun was directly behind the falls, so my pictures aren't exactly award winning. 
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