Rafting on The Blackfoot River

We arrived in Missoula after 2 uneventful flights from Boston. What a difference traveling on a holiday. No crowds and no lines. We went thru check-in in about 3 minutes. Hardest thing was taking off and putting on our shoes. We were picked up by Sean & Nicole who then took us home and put on a great fourth of July barbecue - ribs, chicken, fresh coleslaw, the works. We played stump in the backyard and watched the Missoula fireworks shows from Mount Jumbo, which is the mountain alongside their house.

Saturday morning, we got up early,(sort of) met up with Elliot,(the Guide) Caitlin, and 2 of their friends, Nick and Madeline, loaded the raft in the back of Elliot's car and the cooler in ours and headed off for the Blackfoot River. The Blackfoot was the river that the movie "A River Run's Through it" took place on. Although I have been told that it wasn't actually used in the movie. We dropped off the raft and Elliot and Nicole took one car down to the take out place, and we started pumping up the raft. Elliot gets the raft from Univ of Montana where he is now a guide for freshmen trips. By the time they got back we had the raft pumped up and our life jackets on and ready to go.
The trip we took was about 11 river miles long with 4 sections of rapids, Ellliot said they were rated 2-3 and the river was moving along at about 4mph. We stopped for lunch just before the Clearwater river and just after we had gotten soaked in the rapids. Lunch was Barbecued ribs, chicken and peanut butter cookies. The whole package of cookies disappeared. We put back in and drifted down the river with one more long set of rapids before we took out at Roundup. It was a great day and lot's of fun.

Sunday we had a quiet day. Sean & I did a short hike up in the Blue Mountain recreation area. Nice views from the top looking back towards Missoula from the West.
If you enlarge the picture and look to Sean's right there is a large brown hill with a white spot in it. That is Mount Jumbo and their house is just below it.

Today was a rest day, work in the garden and Ellen & I are going for a short hike up in the Rattlesnake Recreation Area and then on to Glacier tomorrow. We will be back in touch in a week. Make sure you check out our Blackfoot river rafting adventure in the Link section.