Water. In its various states.
All spring and summer, our travels have had us swimming through the god-awful humidity of the midwest, south, and southern plains.
Blech!
So we skipped to the northern plains. Suddenly, it was cool and dry.
Glorious!
We occasionally hopped on the water.
Our travels took us to various spots, like the Confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers just outside of a booming Williston, North Dakota . No picture of the actual joining of the waters, but we had a great time learning about the history, geology, and geography of the area.
Plus, it was fun to see where two rivers that i have spent a fair amount of time fishing.
As a matter of fact, a few days later we were fishing the Missouri, as shown above. Goddess caught that beauty as we were trolling on Lake Holter in Montana, the last reservoir before the Mighty Mo has a 90-mile free run to Great Falls, Montana.
About 10 miles upriver from Holter Dam is the Gates of the Mountains, named by Meriwether Lewis as his expedition with William Clark wend their way westward across the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.
Heading back towards Holter Dam, we crossed the mouth of Mann Gulch as it entered Holter Lake. Back in the gulch, in 1949, 13 smokejumpers lost their lives. Norman Maclean, author of the classic A River Runs Through It wrote a book on the Mann Gulch Fire called Young Men and Fire. The linked wiki is a good read on it, but nothing like the book.
A couple of days later, we drift boated the Missouri below Holter Dam. Fly fishing was the name of the game, and with gusty winds, removing wind knots in the leaders took a large amount of time. But the strikes were consistent enough to keep it fun. That’s where and how I caught the one in the pic above.
On another day, we had to visit the shortest river in North America, the Roe River, just downstream on the Missouri River from downtown Great Falls. The Roe rises from a cold-water spring about 30’, within a stone’s throw, of the Missouri, but mainly flows downstream parallel to the Missouri for all of 201’ before flowing into the Missouri.
That’s enough water for now. We’re enjoying the coolness of the northern Rockies, where at elevation we have already spied fresh snowfall and changing leaves.
Oh, and the features photo up top is Mom walking an Atlantic-side beach in Florida, where it was definitely hotter and more humid a few weeks prior to the bulk of the photos above.