Ready to go!
After we got back from our backpacking trip, Jack and I had one day to rest up, borrow a canoe, gather our river trip gear, and get ready to go. We were borrowing a canoe from friends because their canoe is a bit wider and more stable than ours. The extra width meant our gear would fit in it a bit better, and it's also a foot longer.
We put the canoe on top of our Subaru Forester; I was reluctant to use the truck because there are no fast charging stations out in eastern Montana except along the interstates, and we weren't going anywhere near an interstate once we took the northwest bypass around Great Falls. There is a Tesla charging station in Great Falls, but I didn't have the adapter I needed to use it. So with our 350 miles of range we could have easily made it to the put in, but not also the shuttle and the trip home. I wasn't confident the people I had arranged with to do the shuttle knew much about electric vehicles and charging them, so I was reluctant to leave the truck with them with instructions for charging. I probably should have checked, because if they knew how to drive an electric vehicle and had a 240 volt outlet to charge with before they shuttled the vehicle, that would have worked. In any case, we packed the car so it was ready to go the next morning. I was weak with not much appetite and not feeling great; I took a covid test but it came out negative, So we carried on, and I was banking on powering through whatever it was.
The next morning we got up at a reasonably early hour, ate a big breakfast and were off. We had an uneventful trip over the pass, around Great Falls, and into Fort Benton, where we stopped at Missouri River Outfitters and gave them a key to the car along with instructions for where to pick it up and drop it off. Then we drove to Coal Banks Landing, loaded the boat, and shoved off. We arrived at Coal Banks about 13:15, and left about 14:10; not having to do the shuttle and not having too much stuff allowed us to get on the river in short order.
The river was low, slow, and warm, but we made good time. I hadn't planned to go very far down river, and the five miles to camp went by pretty easily. Jack hadn't paddled a canoe before; I gave him some pointers on what to do when we needed to turn, and he did great.
It was breezy as we headed down river with a tailwind to boot. We had a sail with us, but I thought this first day we should get our ducks in a row for paddling before we tried sailing, so we didn't attempt to hoist the sail.
We arrived at camp around 15:30. It was still hot, so we rested for a few hours until it cooled off a bit. A motor boat went by heading upstream; I thought that was illegal this time of year but wasn't sure.
Much to our surprise we had a lone turkey walk down to the river near camp. There was a deer just behind us, and fox and racoon tracks on the beach. We had the camp all to ourselves, which was pretty nice. Jack wanted a campfire so we started one, although we didn't try doing it with a bow-drill. I was still feeling a little weak and didn't have much appetite.
Towards evening we hiked up one of the hills behind camp to check out some tipi rings that I knew were there. Sadly, they seemed to have been significantly disturbed since my last visit a few years ago.
I got in the river to cool off, but Jack wasn't particularly interested and instead amused himself skipping rocks while I soaked. We relaxed and enjoyed our snacks until dinner time. I had some bison pepper sticks which had escaped notice in the freezer. They were great, and a big hit with Jack.
Jack sent a message to Dona and his mom so they would know where we were, and now that we had learned the trick, we waited around for the device to get synced with its satellites. It took some minutes, and surprised me given the open terrain. Sometimes modern technology is not as fast as you think it should be.
Since this was a float trip and we weren't so constrained weight-wise, Jack brought along his animal friend, Curious George. George is a family heirloom, handed from father to son.
For dinner we cooked up some mac and cheese. We had to make two batches because it takes six cups of water and the small pot only holds siz cups. Oops, should have brought the whole cook-kit! While we were eating we heard a loud "thunk" followed by a crash. Jack had been looking in the right direction and saw a huge piece of bark fall off a big gnarly downed cottonwood near us. At dusk we were treated to a great sunset.
As dawn was approaching we were treated to a symphony of bird songs, one of my favorite things about being outside. Earlier in the night I had heard a strange squawk. I can't identify many bird sounds, but I guessed it might be some kind of heron, maybe a Black-Crowned or a Great Blue. When I got home I checked out some calls on All About Birds, one of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology websites, and it seemed (in my memory...) more like a Black-Crowned. But the range map makes it seem less likely. It wasn't a Sandhill Crane; I know that one. The morning dawned fresh, clear. and even cool for a little while. I saw a bright yellow American Goldfinch on my way to the outhouse.
Jack became our chief navigator, ticking off the various landmarks as we made our way downstream. He enjoyed going over the map at camp before we left.
As we got further down river we entered what's known as the White Cliffs section. I've always wondered what the various Native American tribes called this area, but haven't found anything. We saw some nice colonies of Cliff Swallows on the rock walls that dropped into the river.
We stopped at the Eagle Creek Campground to explore Neat Coulee. I suggested to Jack that he not wear socks because all the grass-seed would grab on to it, but I think he was worried sandals without socks would give him blisters. In any case, after a bit he took them off.
The coulee was refreshingly cool. A bird fly off from a depression in the wall at about head height. We could get close and saw it had a nest. I can't remember if it had eggs or a young chick in it, but we moved off so as not to disturb it.
The slot that is the coulee forks near the beginning, and we had taken the right fork. After a ways it opens back up and you come out of the slot. We stopped for snacks and water, then climbed up over a ridge and dropped back down into the upper end of the left-hand slot. and followed it down to the fork.
After we got back in the boat we realized we had a slight downstream breeze, so we got out the sail and enjoyed some effortless progress
I was hoping to stop at the Hole-in-the-Wall to camp, so we could climb up to the hole and poke around a bit. But there was a big party of high-school kids there, and while there was room, it wouldn't have been the best camp. I knew of another possibility a little farther downstream, where we could still get to the Hole-in-the-Wall, so we headed for that. Unfortunately, it was overrun with cows. In the end, we just took pictures and enjoyed looking at it as we slid by.
We hopscotshed down the river with a family from Bozeman looking for a camp. Their two young girls were totally at home in the water, floating / swimming with their life-jackets, crawling up on a paddleboard, or just holding on to a line dragging behind the canoe their dad was paddling. Mom was on a paddleboard up ahead most of the time.
I was surprised Jack hadn't really gotten in the river yet. It was hot, so I splashed him a little with my paddle. He was not happy about that, and went into a funk for a while. I was caught me off guard; it was the kind of splash people do on river trips all the time, and I hadn't expected him to be upset.
We were seeing a lot of big fish in the river, but I have no idea what they were. Early on we saw a dorsal fin that was sticking up at least four inches out of the water. Sometimes we just saw big long shapes near the boat, but other times we saw big dorsal fins sticking out of the water. When they spooked and took off they left a large wake.
We checked out a few possible camps but most of them had really tall coarse grass and were going to require cleaning up years of down cottonwood branches and would be a little awkward to camp in. We finally pulled up at the Dark Butte primitive camp about 18:30 and had it all to ourselves. It's advertised as having composting toilets, but they haven't been operable for years. The Dark Butte camp is where the valley holding Steamboat Rock is located. It's named that because the two towers are supposed to be the stacks of the steam engines, and I presume the rest of the rock is the multi-storey decks of the passenger compartments.
After resting up from the heat we decided to take a hike. We started by heading for the top of the nearest rock formation behind camp.
While we were enjoying the view we could see a big group of kids heading up towards us from camp. They turned out to be a church group from the midwest and south. We were disappointed, thinking they might be going to camp here for the night, but they were heading on downriver. We vacated the rocks as they arrived, and on our way down decided to cross over and go see Steamboat Rock.
It was a scramble up the scree to get to the base of Steamboat Rock. On the way up we spooked a mule deer out of the bowl at the head of the rock, and a covey of Chukars which was a real treat.
There were cows monopolizing the trees across the river and downstream, but fortunately none in camp. In the end we had two other small parties at the Dark Butte camp. There were three guys from Missoula, Stevensville, and Phoenix in the spot above us, and the family from Bozeman had pulled in above them. Everyone was quiet and we had a nice evening.
We went to sleep with coyotes howling, heat lightning flashing in the distance, and wind in the cottonwoods that sounded like a soft rain.
The next morning we floated down and out of the White Cliffs section. We had two American White Pelicans accompanying us for a while, and got to see a Bald Eagle with a young Eaglet on the rocks nearby.
There was a big group camped at Slaughter River, and the family of four from Bozeman had landed at the nice primitive camp I was hoping for below that. We could have camped on the beach below them but decided to leave them to enjoy the solitude, and we continued down to The Wall primitive camp, arriving about 16:45. It was still pretty warm, and we had the camp all to ourselves at that point. Jack hadn't gone swimming yet and I needed to cool off, so I waded out in the shallows in front of camp with my life jacket still on and floated down a bit. With some encouragement Jack joined in, and soon we were both enjoying a relaxing float and cooling down. We found some frogs along shore when we were walking back up to repeat the float.
Our ice was holding up well in the cooler, and this was our last night on the river. When I was pawing around in the freezer before we left, I found some Bison salami along with the Bison pepper sticks. Unfortunately we didn't have any cheese left, but we broke it out anyway and it was a big hit. Bison salami and Knäckebröt. Yum!
About 18:30 while we were enjoying our hors d'ouvres two guys pulled up in a cataraft. They had come all the way from Big Sandy and decided not to camp at Slaughter River because there were two large groups there. I guess they didn't do a lot of sight-seeing along the way. They were from Washington, Chehalis and someplace near Olympia. They seemed like nice folks, apologized for crashing our camp and set up quietly by the other fire ring a ways above us.
About 19:30 three young guys from Oklahoma in rented kayaks showed up and just crashed. No hello, no appologies for crashing our camp, no asking where we were camping. We hadn't set up our tent yet as there wasn't any hurry, and they started depositing stuff where we were planning on setting up. I told them that was where we were planning on putting our tent, so they moved, just barely, to a bare spot that was still part of our camp. I didn't want to make a stink about it but it was pretty rude, and there was lots of room to camp elsewhere if you knew what you were looking at, which they obviously didn't.
Jack was doing great. He volunteered to set up the stove, and set up the tent. After dinner we enjoyed the rest of the evening looking out at the river. I told him about some other river trips and some of our trips in Africa, hoping to instill some desire to see more of the world.
One trouble with sharing a camp is the additional low level of background noise and activity. I lost hearing all birds until the other parties had left the next morning. Then voila! I heard birds again.
Jack was cheery as we packed up and headed down the river on this last day. And at some point he decided to hop out and float down alongside the canoe. Yea! I can see how it could be a bit intimidating — after all, the boat might float on down the river. Will you be able to stand up? Will you be able to swim to shore? Unless you have experience and confidence in your swimming, it would be scary. So we brought the boat nearer to shore and he hopped out. Once he was in and discovered he could maneuver around and swim towards shore or the boat if necessary, he was all in. Yea!
Before we knew it we were at Judith Landing. The car was waiting for us and we packed up. Jack was in good spirits and had been a good companion. I'm hoping we can do more trips soon, maybe a more challenging river trip with real white-water.