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.

Quissett Harbor first overnight 2008

We left Marion on Saturday morning with Neilli aboard for a cruise to Quissett for an overnight and to check out our new inflatable dinghy's performance. It took us 2 hours to cross the bay and find a mooring in the harbor. The boatyard at Quissett would prefer that you pick one of it's moorings rather than anchor because of their underwater grid. The moorings are free during the day and for an overnight they charge $30 in the outer harbor, where we stayed this time, and $40 in the inner harbor. We have always been able to find a mooring the times we have been here. The dinghy towed well with 2 lines on the way over. On the way home I decided to only use the bow line and it worked as well. The two lines are to stop the dinghy from flipping in high winds, but we certainly had strong breezes and waves all the way home on Sunday and there never was an indication that the dinghy was going to turn over. Our hard dinghy weighs about the same and we have never had any trouble towing it with only one line. The picture is of an old USCG 52' Buoy Tender moored in Quissett. Some of you may recognize it as a boat that was once owned by Dick Edwards. It's now owned by the boatyard and he has plans of restoring it. Quissett is a nice overnight for us, easy to get to, usually one tack from Marion, it is quiet, has a nice conservation area walk that goes out to a knob in the bay. We loaded everyone in the dink for a ride up the harbor and to take Nel for a walk. I would like to say that the Seagull engine worked flawlessly but that wasn't the case. I nearly had to row us back but finally got to start. Next year we are going to upgrade the motor.

When we got to the head of the harbor there was a group of well dressed people standing around.We thought that their might be a wedding in the making. We headed out for the knob, and the group shortly followed us. Instead of a wedding it was a baby naming ceremony. The baby , (at least a year old)was in a white dress with a herb garland on her head. There were two people using bodrun drums(traditional Irish drums) and one carrying burning herbs. It was a pagan/druid ceremony we guessed. I got in a little trouble for pulling Ellen off the knob early before the ceremony was completed and it turned out that we had friends out in the harbor who saw us on the knob , heard the drums, saw the smoke, but did not know what was going on. We had a great dinner on board thanks in part to the Marion General Store and on Sunday Omelets and Italian bacon for breakfast before we headed home.

Group Mail test

This is really just a test to see if the new notification system is up and running. In actuality my posting has been few and far between in the past, but this summer we plan to be hither and yon and now that I am retired??, I shall have more time. The boat is in the water, we are heading to Missoula in early July, NH in Early August, USCGAA reunion late August, and then hopefully some more weekend trips. Hope you all are having a nice day and we will be talking.