EXPENSES: JACKSON HOLE                                                                                                                  

Quanto?
Italian for "How much?"
Always the key question.
How much does a 30-day auto-trip cost?
A while ago I created a budget for the trip.
Here it is:                                                                                                                              

Room   $130.00             x            30        $3,900.00                                    
Café     $7.00                                              $210.00                                                       Breakfast          $10.00                               $300.00                                                      
Lunch   $10.00                                      $300.00                                                      
Dinner $125.00                                       $3,750.00                                                   
Gas       $25.00                                          $750.00                                                      
Tolls  $7.00                                               $210.00                                                       Admissions      $25.00                              $750.00                                                      
In town Transport                                     $600.00                                                       Miscellany        $10.00                             $300.00                                                      

Total estimated expenses are $11,070.00                                                                        

Basically, when I auto-tripped to New Orleans last year the trip cost $350 a day.
This estimate of expenses works out to $369.00 a day, the same thing considering that I really don't even know the configuration of the trip.

How many opportunities will there be to have formal, expensive dinners?
Obviously, Chicago, Yellowstone, Dallas and Savannah will have such restaurants.
But many places along the way will feature restaurants of a family nature, not very expensive.

So almost a year ago I budgeted a monthly set aside and am close enough to declare affordability.                                                                                                                        

Recently, I watched Ken Burns' great documentary on Lewis and Clark and did some supplemental reading. Wow! What men!
Three dozen or so pushing off into the great unknown to map, gather scientific knowledge, and to declare to the great powers of Spain, England, and Mexico, as well as to the earliest of American immigrants, the colorful Native tribes of North America, to declare to one and all that this is now American land and subject to the laws of the United States.

Today's posting will be a bit of an homage to the Corps of Discovery.          

Today is Monday, July 23, 2018
Good morning, my friends.
This is my 106th consecutive daily posting. 

It is 5.24am and we are in a period of hot, humid, and wet weather, to last a few days. Umbrellas and/or rain jackets at all times.

Dinner is a sashimi salad.
I will be tweaking the Tuna Salad recipe on the Web Site, to add some cold, vinegary rice to the mix of sashimi. In the next day or two.

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WIKIPEDIA’S SUMMARY OF WHAT’S PLAYING:
“Oliver!” is a 1968 musical drama film directed by Carol Reed and based on the stage musical of the same name, with book, music and lyrics written by Lionel Bart.

The screenplay was written by Vernon Harris.
Both the film and play are based on Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. The film includes such musical numbers as "Food, Glorious Food", "Consider Yourself", "As Long as He Needs Me", "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two", and "Where Is Love?".
Filmed in Shepperton Film Studio in Surrey, the film was a Romulus Films production and was distributed internationally by Columbia Pictures.

At the 41st Academy Awards for 1968, Oliver! was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture, Best Director for Reed, and an Honorary Award for choreographer Onna White. At the 26th Golden Globe Awards, the film won two Golden Globes: for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, and Best Actor - Musical or Comedy for Ron Moody.
 

After America won its freedom from England, it was the most powerful force on the continents of both North and South America and invasion from Europe was remote. Americans came to believe that God himself had planned for them to occupy the entire land between the oceans as either a single behemoth of a country or an informal alliance of similarly-constituted republics. 

The subtleties of prior claims of overseas nations, the land claims of Mexico, England, Spain, France, and Native Americans, ‘native’ meaning America’s first immigrants, as well as American-Christian love for our fellow-man, and the rights of individuals were niceties lost on the general populace clamoring for ‘free land.’ 
The sonorous and easily understood “From sea to shining sea” became imbedded in the American subconscious and part of the American political rhetoric.
Of course, ‘under God, with liberty and justice for all” applied only to white American men, preferably landed.

Thomas Jefferson, elected President in 1800, didn’t himself subscribe to the jingoism of Manifest Destiny.

But events, like a broken water pipe, sometimes wash ideals under the door.

Due to his overriding interest in waging war in Europe and to the success of the slave rebellion in Haiti, Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered his ideas of empire in the New World.
He offered the President the French-owned lands in North America called the Louisiana Territory, 530 million acres, a land area of world geographic dimensions.

At $15,000,000.00, it calculated out to three cents an acre, a better deal than buying Manhattan Island for a string of beads.
(Of course, if you’ve ever seen them, those were very, very nice beads!
Looking at the problems of NYC today one wonders who got the better of that deal.)
The addition of the Louisiana Territory, which included the entire Midwest to the Pacific, plus Louisiana, more than doubled the size of the United States and thrilled the expansionists. 

Jefferson himself jumped at the chance, and with the enthusiastic support of Congress, the deal was made.

Jefferson was so excited by the new reach of America that even while the negotiations were being held under the utmost secrecy, he called upon his friend and personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, who was both a scientist and a frontiersman, to Captain a pioneering expedition to bring the vast, new territory into the body politic. 
Lewis, in turn, enlisted William Clark as his co-captain.  Clark was his onetime mentor and greatly skilled as a fighter and a frontiersman.

Jefferson explained the mission. To effectively expand America into the west, the government needed to gather knowledge about the lands west of St. Louis.

The goals of the expedition were:
To get familiar with America’s new territory;
To find a water route to the Pacific which would open trade, encourage settlement of the land, and
To establish the government’s hegemony over its new territory.
The Corps of Discovery would also learn about the animals and plants, the Native American tribes, and land routes; and, of course, would spread the gospel of liberty, America’s national religion.
Lewis and Clark were enjoined to keep detailed and copious notes.

Since these explorers would be cut off from any help or relief whatsoever, the expedition had to be very carefully planned.

In choosing their crew, the captains hand-picked strong men who could endure the rigors of frontier living and exploration; fearless men who could face the unknown without quailing and single men who wouldn’t be diverted by family obligations. 
From among applicants, they chose those skilled in the basics of hunting, fishing, gun fighting, boating, swimming and survival in the wild. 
From among these, they made sure that the group included blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, fiddlers, surveyors, scouts and those possessing the myriad other skills that would be needed on this perilous and ambitious mission. 

The Captains bought equipment for mapmaking: a surveyor’s compass, a telescope and sextants; equipment for camping: tents, mosquito curtains.  They bought small tools like steels for fires, handsaws, cooking equipment, hatchets, fishing equipment and a corn mill and supplies like medicines, books, whiskey, soap, paste for soup, salt and coffee.  They bought writing materials: paper, ink and crayons. For the tribes they would meet they bought blankets, mirrors, sewing needles, silk ribbons, combs, cloth, tobacco, tomahawks, knives, kettles, face paint and tiny beads. 

Because some of the tribes might be hostile to their new leaders and because Spain and even England might try to disrupt it, the expedition had to be big enough to defend itself and be armed with enough modern weaponry, including a cannon and a limitless supply of gunpowder and shot. 

In May, 1804, the 33 men of the Corps of Discovery, as they called themselves, set out from Camp Dubois, Illinois.  The modern armament, the frontier attitude of fearless self-sufficiency, and the leadership made this the most effective fighting force of 33 men in the entire world and would certainly give pause to any enemy they would be likely to meet.

In September 1806, the Corps returned to St. Louis to report its findings to Jefferson, maps, sketches, and journals in hand.

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Post Scripts
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Be good.
Be well.
Love you.