CLARKSTON, Asotin County — Tuesday, Oct. 4 — Today, the Car of Discovery brought me to the Corps of Discovery

After plunging down from the Palouse plateau on a highway with enough runaway-truck ramps to stop a UPS fleet, I'm here on the Snake River at the entrance to Hell's Canyon — right about where Lewis and Clark camped on their westward journey 200 years ago next Monday.

And here — in the town named for him — I met Capt. William Clark, who must have gotten left behind.

And, you know, he's aged really, really well. Because — well, it really was HIM. The Buzz Aldrin of 1805, the guy whose name always comes after Lewis.

He pretty much managed to convince me, along with the rest of a Clarkston audience gathered during this week of reenactments celebrating the historic anniversary. A National Park Service traveling exhibition has put up tents by the river.

Even though I'd chatted with him (in his spiffy black-and-red dress uniform) just prior to his hour-long William Clark speech, by the time he was done I was so disconnected from temporal reality that I had to page back in my notebook to remember his real name: Craig Rockwell

Most of the time, Rockwell, 49, helps to manage natural resources for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers here in Clarkston. His Clark portrayal, which he started about five years ago, has taken him across the country — even farther than Clark's travels. Tall, red-headed and intense, he has performed during Corps of Discovery celebrations at Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello; in St. Louis, in Louisville, and even before a session of Congress.

He used to hate history lessons when he was a kid.

"It was taught by the two oldest men in the school. It was just names and dates pounded into your head so you could regurgitate them for a Friday morning test!"

Now, he draws "wows" when he takes his act to schools. From exhaustive study of Lewis and Clark's journals, he (as Clark) talks about other members of the Corps as if they were people he had, well, gotten to know during a couple years of traipsing through the wilderness together.

Rockwell is particularly interested in how Clark's sympathies toward the Shoshone girl, Sacagawea, who almost died during the trip, mellowed him toward Indians and shaped his later life, when he was Secretary of Indian Affairs.

"This guy started out as an Indian fighter! That was what he did when he got into the army."

For the most part, the western Indians weren't what the explorers expected.

"All through their journals, they were surprised when the Indians were noble and generous," Rockwell told me. "They expected savages and thieves, and they found them much different than that."

We had to interrupt our chat when Capt. Clark's cell phone rang. Sorry, gotta take this call.

Oh, right. It's 2005.

Note: Craig Rockwell will appear as Capt. William Clark during Lewis and Clark anniversary celebrations on the Long Beach Peninsula Nov. 7-15. For details, see www.lewisandclark200.gov.

Top story...

...in today's Lewiston, Idaho, Tribune (from just across the river): Reenactors from across the nation who hope to canoe down the nearby Clearwater River this week to follow L&C's path are worried: The river is so low that their heavy, historically accurate dugout canoes might get stranded on rocks. Dam operators won't release more water.

I'm dreaming of a plump aebelskiver

Readers Aaron Whiteman of Pullman and Nick Farley, a WSU student, steered me right when they tipped me to breakfast at the Old European restaurant on Grand Avenue in downtown Pullman.

They both mentioned something called aebelskivers, which Farley called "heaven in a pancake."

Can't argue. A plate of six of these little dough puffs, the size of tennis balls dried on the shrink cycle, came powdered with sugar and with blackberry brandy syrup for the drizzling.

Tackling them fresh off the griddle, I could almost feel a sigh of hot air brush my cheek as I sank my fork in.

They're a Danish thing, made of egg batter cooked on a special cast-iron pan over a medium fire.

On weekends, WSU students pack the house, waitress Connie Claussen told me. "If you're a college student and you don't know about this place, you don't have any friends!"

It's nice to be nice to the nice

"No Parking" signs in downtown Pullman bear the footnote, "Parking Welcome Other Areas."

Just something I noticed:

Since I left the west side of the Cascades, every single radio station in the kitchen of every single restaurant I've eaten in has been tuned to music you could line dance to.

Thar she blew

When the Queen of the West, a colorful paddlewheeler that plies the Snake River for the tourist trade, departed the Port of Clarkston today, I did a doubletake. Had there been an explosion or something? No, it's just that a mock smokestack with painted "flames" blazing from the top was pushed backward on hinges — so the modern replica could pass under a low bridge, I think.

Tomorrow: A town so nice they named it twice: Walla x 2.

Reader tips

Great stuff! I left the Seattle area in 1998 and now live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Your reports have started the juices flowing again and I can't wait to trudge quiet reaches of your beautiful state!
– George Geanuleas, Glenside, Penn.

Take it from a Coug, you'll never find a better burger than at Elinore's Corner Saloon in Uniontown.
– Erik W. Bothell, Wash.

Hey you've GOT to go through the best little town in our state: Dayton. Its not far from where you are now. Its like a Norman Rockwell painting. It has the county courthouse, lots of historic homes and a lot of history.
– Janelle, Snoqualmie, Wash.

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