Some great............falls.

LOL  Well obviously this place was named because of it's pretty great water falls.  Louis and Clark 'discovered' them on their journey West and somehow because of that discovery the town was situated here.  There are 5 falls in Great Falls, 10 miles from the first to the last and from the first fall to the last, the Missouri River drops a total of 612 feet.  Three of the five are dammed.  That's about the extent of what I know about the history of this place because frankly, as interesting as it might seem, I don't give a care in the world about most history.  Well, Western/American history that is.  We plan on going to the Louis and Clark center here and doing the tour so maybe eventually I'll learn more.  But for now, we can say we've seen all of the falls on the Missouri River that snakes through the town.  Some are ..ehhh...  and a couple are WOW.  I'll just show you the wows. 

The first one is Rainbow Falls (the 3rd of the 5).  I read that L & C named it Rainbow because as they came up to it, they saw a lot of rainbows in the mist.  I thought that was cool, but we were so excited to see rainbows when we went to see it!  As hard as I tried, I wasn't able to capture them in the pics.  Remember to click on the pictures to see close up.



 Rainbow Falls

I like how they left part of the waterfall intact after the dammed section. At this part of the overlook we are getting wet and it's real loud.  This is where we saw the most rainbows.



 It winds around to the right and on this first curve there are a couple of un-dammed falls.  We are looking from an overlook parking lot and can't drive any further to see those falls but there are bike trails that continue on from the parking lot that we plan on riding soon.  They are the only way to view these falls..can't wait to see them up close!

 You can kind of see the falls there where you see white water.  If you click the pic you can really see it.  Click a second time and you can't miss it.

The following weekend we drove out to the last falls of the five, Ryan Dam, also called The Great Falls.  Rainbow Falls drops 44 feet, The Great Falls falls 87 feet.

We heard that we had to cross a bridge to get on an island with an overlook to the falls.  There it is!

 

And immediately we see ADVENTURE lol

Here we go!

 

Zak isn't sure.

More scary signs.

 

As soon as we cross the bridge we are on a lush, green park-like island.  VERY pretty.

 

Five minutes on the trail and here are the falls..

After we look at the falls a while, we go back down and walk the island.  The kids decide to roll down the hills a few hundred times lol

The bridge back!  This time, Zak TRIES to sway it..  I could have put some money on that one :)

This one was REALLY exciting to see.  Hope you liked the pics!

 

c, m, c & z!