Aaron, Chantel and the Jenkins kids: Cabin Trip 7/17

We took a week and went up to the cabin in Island Park again. It was another wonderful trip full of relaxation and adventure. Paul came up on Monday and stayed with us the rest of the week. Plus we had some friends that were camping over by MeadowView Ranch.

Bailey and their son Auston

Mid-week, we took a trip up to Great Falls, Montana to see another portion of the Lewis & Clark trail. Lewis & Clark were warned by some Indians that there were some falls up ahead as they traversed the river and thought it would be just a couple of days delay. Instead it ended up being quite a few months delay as they pulled their boats out and walked around the multiple falls in the area.

On the way back from Great Falls, we had 2 interesting things happen.

1. We stopped and fished the Missouri river. We were only able to spend about 15 min fishing because the mosquitoes were so thick. I escaped to the truck with Bailey and watched the caddis and mosquitoes cover the truck.

2. Outside of Helena, we were detoured off the freeway due to an accident in the construction zone, which blocked the only lane. Luckily, their frontage roads ride right along the freeway and have speed limits of 60 mph. So, we didn't lose too much time. We passed through a small town, named Craig, probably in existence only for fly fisherman, as we got back on the freeway. On the on-ramp, we noticed a semi truck off to the right and a drunk girl on the left trying to walk the white line. She was laughing and having a good time, though it was a horrible place to test her own sobriety. We figured she was 16 -18 years old and probably with the truck, so we didn't stop. We entered the freeway and about 3/4 of a mile down the road, we see another person walking. This was another girl around the same age, but dressed in a bikini top and a skimpy pair of shorts. She was visibly drunk and also trying to walk the white line of the emergency lane. It took a minute for all of us to register what was going on, and by then we were too far down the road to stop, so I started calling every number I could find to get a hold of highway patrol or sheriff cars to go help her. I got answering machines on all of them. I checked online in the Helena newspaper to see if there were any articles about the girl, hoping and praying she wasn't splatted by a truck, and didn't find anything. So, I choose to believe that she made it off the freeway without harm.

We saw lots of animals this trip, as usual. But, this time we were treated to a moose cow and her calf right next to the cabin. We watched them from the back porch for a while and then from the window in the family room as she ate shrubs and grass around the wood pile at the side of the cabin. Here is a picture.

On our last day, we went to fill up the water bottles at Howard Springs and came across two bull moose in the Henry's Fork river that runs through Mack's Inn. Here is a great picture of them. They didn't seem to mind all the people snapping photos of them while they ate. Beautiful and powerful animals.