Camp River Dubois, at the Lewis and Clark State Historic Site, is another place we visited in 2014 because there was a cake on display there. We didn’t go through the museum then, however, so it was the first place on my list for our summer school studies this year!

There is actually no archeological evidence of where Lewis and Clark wintered on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River before starting out on their westward journey, so the museum dedicated to Rivière Dubois is just based on a guess. The village (no longer accessible to the public), and the cabin at the site are replicas, but they still give visitors a good idea of what the camp would have looked like. We especially liked the garden out back, which had plants like tobacco, cotton, flax, and “walking” onions.

Our next stop was the visitors’ center. We watched a very informative movie about the westward journey, and then went to tour the museum. There were a lot of signs and maps, which conveyed a great deal of information.

There were also many items on display, showing how the exhibition traveled and lived, and what kinds of things they took with them and  found on their journey.

The highlight of the museum was the full-size replica keel boat. I had no idea how truly huge that kind of boat was!

And we saw another statue of Lewis and Clark, with their trusty dog Seaman.

This is a fantastic little museum, with tons more information than you might expect given its size. I’m so glad we finally had a chance to go through it!