Gates of the Mountains

My folks came to town and as our "big adventure" we rented a pontoon boat for the day on Holter Lake and went and zipped around through the gates of the mountains. We brought fishing gear and bait (yes bait), and I caught one walleye. We didn't get much of chance to fish since Jr. was keeping us pretty occupied. It was also around 100 degrees, so we didn't want to really stop the boat.

The Gates of the Mountains (above)

The captain with pontoon boat in the background.

A little rest and relaxation.

And Jr. even got his first fishing pole.

The Main

I had a great time on the Main. Although still low, it was the highest I've floated it, 2.5 "on the shoes". Pretty straight forward run at that level. Met some great new folks, had one day of welcomed rain and ate lots of good food. I even got a ice cream sandwich at Buckskin Bills.

Our TL, Ken.

Apart from a flippin IK'er we had with us, the closest carnage we had was seeing Ken stand his cat vertically in a hole on the second day.

I didn't take a lot of pics this trip, but that's OK cause most of you have seen it anyway.

A river runs thru it...

Caught some sort of trout while fishin for smallmouth the other day. I think I got the pose right but my "catch and release" skills could use some help. The camera accidentally got switched into video mode...almost like candid camera - good fun.

Camping in the Lodgepoles

We headed out with Jon and Kim and the two babies to go camping by the Boulder River. The place we wanted to camp was packed with RVs, motocross bikes and ATVs. I guess that is what we deserve for going camping by Butte. Needless to say, we decided not to stay there so we went to this other campsite tucked in the lodgepoles that we had to ourselvelves. Take a good look, since this whole site is about to be clearcut as the majority of the trees were dead or dieing from beetle kill and the campground was marked for timber harvest. It'll be interesting to see the changes in the landscape over the next few years because of the damn beetles.

Camping was great. Nice scenery, great company, good food, and even got the bacon/BBQ stink out of the rapid shelter. Camping with multiple babies was a good time for all, except when Jr. bit Adrienne. Oops! In the end everyone had a blast and we'll hopefully be heading back to the woods again soon.