3:48 p.m. - FORT YATES -- Neal Corey woke up Friday morning with a wool hat pulled down over his ears, a flint-lock rifle at his side and cured meat on his breath.

He got up in the dark on the kind of day where your bones start out cold and stay that way, no matter how much coffee you drink or layers you pile on. Corey looked to his right, at the cold and quiet Missouri River, and nodded. Gonna be one of those days.

As it was two centuries ago, this part of the country this time of year can begin to test a person's constitution. About 30 members of a living history group are now intimately familiar with cool Dakota nights that are just going to get colder.

The Discovery Expedition of St. Charles, Mo., entered North Dakota and camped out Thursday night at about the same spot the original Lewis and Clark expedition used exactly 200 years ago. The group has undertaken a full-scale re-enactment of the original expedition. It camped just north of here Thursday and shoved off Friday morning in two 40-foot wooden pirogues, similar to the ones used by the Corps of Discovery.

The re-enactors dressed for the weather in wool and buckskin.

"It's still cold in North Dakota," said Scott Mandrell, who portrays Capt. Meriwether Lewis.

Mandrell has been part of the re-enactment for more than a year. On July 5, 2003, he left Washington, D.C. on horseback for Pittsburgh. As Lewis did, Mandrell joined his party in Elizabeth, Pa., and set off down the Monongahela River, then the Ohio and finally the Mississippi to St. Louis.

The group wintered in Illinois, and started north on the Missouri on May 14. There are 12 full-time re-enactors and a stable of 250 that rotate in and out, Mandrell said. He's been with the expedition the whole time, and hasn't seen his family in five months.

Corey, 66, has been on the trip for more than 100 consecutive days. He plans to take a quick trip home to Nebraska and return before the Lewis and Clark bicentennial signature event begins here Oct. 22. Mandrell said the pirogues will reach Bismarck by then, "come hell or high water." The expedition will continue to Fort Mandan, near Washburn, where the original team wintered in 1804-05.

The Discovery Expedition also has with it a 55-foot keelboat, but that was scheduled to be on display in town and wasn't in the water Friday. The two smaller boats aren't completely authentic. They're each equipped with a 50-horse outboard motor, concealed in the center of the boat. Still it's not easy going.

The river didn't stay quiet long Friday morning. By 10 a.m. the winds had reached 30 mph and whitecaps concealed sandbars. If you've seen an ice cube slide diagonally across a glass table-top, then you know what it's like to navigate a 40-foot pirogue on the Missouri River in high winds.

The North Dakota National Guard used two of its jet boats to help navigate in front of the re-enactors, and pull them off sandbars if need be.

"We're in a challenging stretch of the river, as it was historically," Mandrell said. He said his crew can make 15-20 miles a day, more than the 8 miles achieved each day on average by Lewis and Clark. The re-enactors use the extra time to talk about the history of the expedition and their experiences with students and other interested groups.

Included in their party are father and son Bud and Churchill Clark, direct descendants of William Clark. Also with the group are Bob Anderson and Josh Loftis, descendants of Corps member George Shannon.

Corey and Mandrell said that although the river and the country are fundamentally different than they were 200 years ago, there are a lot of similarities, especially in the weather.

No protesters were on hand Friday, but none were expected, Mandrell said. In South Dakota, Indian protesters confronted the re-enactors, saying they were celebrating a trip that led to the end of traditional Indian culture.

Mandrell said the protesters were intelligent and eloquent, and raised good points that can be heard again at the Tent of Many Voices, a living history program that will run through Oct. 31.