We just got back from an incredible camping trip to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. This post is about our time there as a family and to provide the information you need to have a fantastic trip and camping experience!
We started our week-long trip to escape the dreary rainy western side of Washington State by driving over Chinook Pass on the very first day it opened. Driving over newly opened Chinook Pass reminded me of the first time we drove the “Going to the sun road” in Glacier National Park, but much much less traffic which made for a peaceful scenic drive.
We made our way north-east through central Washington, arrived in the NE corner of the state and spent the weekend at our friends off-grid cabin, where we plan to hunt in the fall as we typically do each year for whitetail and mule deer.
As the weekend drew to a close, the forecast became particularly problematic. Non-stop rain from Washington, through the Idaho panhandle and it continued basically until we got past Missoula, MT. Just a brutal brutal amount of rain dropped on this area sending all the rivers to flood stage and the color brown,
When we planned this trip, we weren’t sure what the temps would be in mid-June at 4500 elevation, so we booked the Morrison cabin at the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. The cabin is basically a single room with a double bed and a bunk bed setup. Also, there’s a table for 4 to eat at.
When you add pets, suitcases and other gear, there’s basically no room for even like an extra cot. But that’s fine, we had electricity and heat the entire time, which proved helpful as the day after we arrived we had non-stop 25-45 mph winds that whipped through the area for about 36 hours.
Our plan for day 1 was basically to just get settled. Our plan for day 2, was to go to Yellowstone…but that didn’t happen with their crazy record flooding and the park being shutdown. Totally nuts what happened in this area in terms of flooding, wiping out roads, claiming houses. Truly tragic.
Exploring the area around Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park
Instead we elected to stay local and do some sight seeing around the area. The town of Three Forks has got some good places to eat and shop. One of the things to realize about Montana is that anything within a mile of I-90 is a tourist trap type of setup. They know they may never see you again, so while the people are nice, you aren’t getting the same quality of food for the price vs if you travel just a few miles out of the way.
The Shoppe in Three Forks was a great place to grab an espresso and some pastries. Also, the Iron Horse Cafe and Pie Shop is legit. The food is good, and the pie and milkshakes are stellar.
We got bombarded by ads on I90 for the “best shake ever” on one of the tourist stops, boasting of a 7$ 20 oz huckleberry shake. I’ve had these “tourist shakes”, it’s not the same as what you get at a place like Iron Horse in Three Forks.
Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park Information
Okay, let’s talk about a few things about the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park itself. There are two visitor centers. The lower visitor center is right at the park entrance and has some seriously good information about the cavern tour as well as the park itself. There are souvenirs and a few camping essentials like propane canisters that can be purchased there.
Here’s the biggest thing you should know about touring the Lewis and Clark Caverns…book ahead of time. At one point you could only sign up for cavern tour at the park, but that changed. The Lewis and Clark cavern tour people were turning away a lot of disappointed campers who hoped to signup for a cavern tour the day of.
The upper visitor center has a cafe, gift shop on the left as you arrive in the parking lot and another area on the right is devoted to the caverns and critters around the caverns. The area outside on the right is also where you check-in for the cavern tours.
The road to the upper visitor center is 3 miles of steep grades, and they recommend dropping your trailer off in the trailer drop off area at the lower visitor center (if you aren’t camping there) before heading up.
There are a few places to stop and hike or take in scenic views of the valley below. We stopped at a hike the morning of day 3, before our caverns tour.
The trail signs can be a bit confusing, but we followed the path to the Tobacco Root Mountains vista, which was a loop trail we could follow back to our starting point. About 2 miles total with a moderate grade and a few switchbacks.
In terms of the Lewis and Clark Cavern tour options they basically have two:
- The Paradise room tour
- The classic tour
If you have time and the physical fitness you should do both. We did the classic tour, because you see the majority of the caverns in that tour, but you don’t see the biggest, grandest room which is the Paradise room.
The classic tour does require you make an ascent of a few hundred feat over a moderate graded 3/4 miles in 30 minutes. This is doable by many ages and body types, so there really isn’t a fitness requirement.
In the cave, the bigger challenge for someone of my height (6’4″) is to duck low and sort of squat walk through certain parts of the cave that are really small.
The tour takes about 2 hours from start to finish, with about 1 hour and 20 minutes in the Lewis and Clark Caverns
The paradise tour is designed to be the much easier option, but we didn’t have time to do both, so I can’t say a ton about it.
I’m not a huge fan of group tours, but this one was a decent balance of letting you experience the caverns and giving your relevant interesting information to aid your experience.
If you are hoping for some authentic cave spelunking experience, this won’t quite meet your expectations.
There are hundreds of nicely maintained stairs and strategically placed rails and lighting all throughout the Lewis and Clark Caverns to keep you safe and help you appreciate the fascinating natural architecture of the caves.
If you are like me, that’s basically okay though. I don’t have any desire to do my own spelunking experience…probably because I saw the movie Descent, so yeah this was about the cave experience I could handle.
The Lewis and Clark Caverns are such a cool experience though. The caves have such alien looking features that fascinate and delight the viewer with the aid of the well placed lighting. Well worth the 56$ for the four of us to enjoy.
The final night we spent at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park was the perfect capper to our entire 6 day adventure.
The wind died down so we could responsibly have a fire. We cooked corn on the cob and some wonderful coho salmon we caught from last year.
Camping gear during our trip to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park
One note about the campground is that there was mostly RV’s there. We counted maybe 1 tent camper in the entire campground. I’m sure there will be more later in the summer season, but while our Kodiak Canvas tent could have handled things, we felt much better about being in the cabin.
Another delightful gear discovery is just how well this new Orca cooler we purchased kept ice and our food / beverages cold for.
We like to freeze big water bottles instead of purchasing ice that melts and puddles up in your cooler and for the 4 days of camping and traveling in temperatures from 50 to 80 degrees our ice water bottles were only half un-frozen.
In fact this cooler performed almost too well in that our unfrozen eggs ended up at the bottom of our cooler and several of the eggs actually froze while in this Orca cooler. I’m in love with this cooler!
Without a fire we cooked our meals on a Coleman tabletop propane grill which worked great for all the meals we wanted to cook while it was super windy.
Wrapping up the trip to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park
I have to say, this was my first cavern experience and I think everyone should experience these caves, learning about the fragile ecosystem within and appreciating the natural beauty formed over millions of years.
While I probably won’t come back again just to do the Paradise tour, I feel like I’ve fallen in love with big rolling green hills, mountains and spaced out forests. On the trip back, with nice weather to take in the surrounding landscape, in particular I’m wanting to explore the area between Butte and Missoula a bit more. And it wasn’t just the herd of elk I saw feeding on one of the grassy slopes, but that certainly helps my motivation!
