With the Museum of Discovery and Science is the Blockbuster Imax Theater. If you buy a combination ticket you’ll get $2 off the price. You can watch a second Imax film for half price. This was our first Imax experience but it won’t be our last. We love that kind of theater. The screen is 50 feet high and it curves from one side to the other. The rows of seats for the audience ascend dramatically from one to the next bringing everyone closer to the big screen with no obstructions while the movie is in progress. We sat about halfway up.

We decided to see Lewis and Clark: Great Journey West. There is another dimension to watching a movie on that type of screen. I really felt I was going up the Missouri with the expedition, it is so encompassing. When their bundles started tumbling away from them I wanted to get up and help them redeem them. When Lewis started falling down a cliff I knew exactly how he felt in that predicament because it seemed so real.

Being confronted with the Continental Divide and then the Rocky Mountains I could see what Lewis and Clark saw 200 years ago, insurmountable mountain peaks as far as the eye could see. I would have liked to have seen more of the Great Falls and the river going to and from it, but I could understand the difficulties of portaging around the falls and riding the rapids, especially for Sagajawea (their Indian guide) with her infant baby.

We have flown over the Columbia River going into Portland, OR. The river, captured on the Imax screen, looked very much the same. Visiting Fort Clatsop (their fort near the Pacific Ocean) on a cold drizzly day would look just like it did on the Imax screen.