July 21 - Boating on Flathead Lake, Montana

Convinced by our own PR, we decided to stay another day at our tiny Eden and just chill out. To be fair, the campground had some big negative features also: the RVs were lined up in a parking lot right next to the beach, so we didn't have a lot of privacy, and the beach itself was composed of round pebbles ranging from the size of golf balls to grapes, which made for very uncomfortable walking. Still, the weather stayed nice and on the whole we liked it enough to stay another day.

We spent the morning in Polson mailing off the photo letters, checking on our email at the library, and shopping at Wal Mart for the necessities. We bought some really nice sweet cherries from a roadside stand--they were grown in that area and were being harvested while we visited, so they were really fresh. In fact, we agreed that we had never had a bunch of so consistently perfectly ripe and sweet cherries as we had that day. They were a great addition to lunch!

After lunch I had the bright idea of taking out the inflatable rubber raft we had packed with us on this trip and seeing if it would work. We unrolled it on the picnic table for our campsite and used the pump to inflate the major chambers. It was surprisingly large and yet light enough for Monika and me to easily carry it down to the lakeshore from the table, a distance of only 20 feet, to be sure. In the water it easily carried both of us and really seemed buoyant enough for a third adult or child in a pinch. I had to get used to the oars and how to row the thing, but after about 20 minutes I got the hang of it. Then it was Monika's turn and we zigzagged around the lake for a while until she also had the basic idea down pat. We both thought having another pair of oars so that we could both row at the same time would be a good idea, and life jackets were another item we lacked, so we put those down for future acquisition. Still, the maiden voyage of the "Mutt and Jeff" (we considered naming it the "Lewis and Clark" but decided that would be too grandiose!) went very well in that we did not capsize or get swept to the other side of the lake in some uncontrollable fashion. Given our past history in canoeing in the Everglades (see Wanderung 1), we would definitely count this as a success.

I lit the water heater that afternoon so that we could take some showers, and as I waited for the water to heat I sewed on yet another patch on the zip pants. Then we had a light supper of hard boiled eggs and sandwiches before relaxing for the evening with a driftwood fire. Although I had sawed a big log we found on the beach into 6 segments and split each of those with the ax, we barely had enough wood because that driftwood burned amazingly quickly and completely. It caught on fire within 5 seconds, burned with a completely smokeless flame, and left nothing but a fine white ash when it was done. Still, we had enough to last a little after a beautiful sunset (this time I was taking the pictures).

Then it was time to retire into the trailer for the evening. We had finished our previous book and switched over to reading "Campion's Quarry", an engaging mystery but also easy enough to put down when it was finally time to turn out the lights for the night.