48 miles in 2 days

Commander Liam is ready to navigate

Ricci:  "I'm putting together a canoeing and camping trip on the Missouri River, you want to go?"  

Me:  "Sure!"

Uh-huh.  That's pretty much how it started.  Two days of canoeing and two nights of camping?  Sounds like an adventure for the city girl that I am.  So there I was, agreeing to be more primitive-outdoorsy than I have ever been in my life...without really thinking it through.  Which, in the end, was probably a good thing as if I had really thought about it, I might have said no.

Up until that fateful weekend, the most adventurous I had ever been in the great wilds was going to cabins in the California deserts or a house in the country of Virginia.  Now, I'm not really counting the Army days in this, since I didn't have to plan for any of it; they supplied everything and I just went with it.  Granted there were several nights of sleeping in a small pup tent in a borrowed sleeping bag.....you know, I remember those being very good nights because I actually got a decent amount of sleep!

Anywhos.....ignoring my Army days, my "camping" involved cabins with running water, indoor restrooms with showers, beds, and sometimes we got crazy and had TV.  So, not really roughing it in any way, shape, or form.  As far as my boat experience goes, there was that one day on the lake with my brother and that 7 day cruise in Hawaii (great In-Laws are simply amazing).  Neither required me to work.  Hell, on this trip I had to get a sleeping bag and I borrowed a tent from Ricci.  I didn't even have a flashlight...in hindsight, it is a really, really, really, really good thing that I didn't think it through!  

hehehehe.....we did not set them up this way on purpose

We went out on Friday afternoon and camped at our starting point.  That night I discovered just what one can cook over a small camp fire thrown together in an hour:

Nom nom nom....veggies and bacon

WE HAVE FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!  Take that nature!

So, yeah.  Ms. Ricci is pretty amazing.  She cooked actual food and put this whole trip together.  When we went grocery shopping earlier that day, I imagined we'd be buying hot dogs and lunchables.  So as soon as she started listing off all these fresh vegetables I just kind of stared at her, slightly dumbfounded.  Who knew?!  

So the next morning we got up.....bright and early? Bright, yes.  Early, no. It was something like 830 am, and I may have been up and moving, but I was not shining.  

I'm up but I refuse to shine until there is coffee.....

Liam and Bella were ready to go!

So, after coffee, which was Via and surprisingly good, we packed all our gear into the canoes and headed out.  Maybe 5 miles later we stopped.  Mainly because the dogs were in different canoes and they were whining non-stop.  Loudly.  The sound echoed off of the breaks.  So, we stopped here:

Most definitely not going to complain about that view!

I think that first stretch was about 5 miles in just over an hour.  Slow, huh?  Well, the river itself only flows at about 2-3 miles an hour, which didn't sound so bad......until we were 20 miles into our trip, and were exhausted because the river literally seemed to stop moving for about the final 6 miles before we got to camp.  I have decided that I shall now inform people when they are moving too slow that the Missouri River moves faster than them.  Nevermind that whole "slower than molasses" thing....no.  Slower than the Missouri River.  

Somehow we managed to power through 28 miles on that first day.  What now, Slowest River in the World?!  "Exhausted physically" pretty much summed up what I felt like.  My arms hurt, my upper back hurt, and my ass hurt.  There is NOTHING comfortable about sitting on an aluminum seat, even when you try to pad it with your life-jacket.  

Kellie my canoeing partner!  

Now, let me just tell you about our campsites.  The first campsite was a BLM managed camp for the Missouri River Breaks Monument.  The Monument includes the BLM public land running down the river.  Side note, all BLM is public, you simply have to find out how to get there (if it is surrounded by public or state lands) and you generally cannot drive on it unless there are roads (or it is designated as an off road area).  As for the "breaks" part, just take a gander at some of the pictures throughout this post and you'll see what looks suspiciously like mountains.  The tops of these "mountains" are actually part of the prairie.  The BLM's Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument website (holy crap that was a mouthful), explains it like this, "The land and the rugged, surrounding uplands (commonly call the Missouri Breaks)..."  "Uplands," huh?  These uplands are essentially the cliffs running along the river.  Like, way back in the day, a much larger river flowed through this area and cut down into the land.  A lot of these hillsides are basically cliffs.  

I completely got away from describing our campsites.  The first one totally had access to well water and toilets!  It was pretty fancy.  But the second campsite was considered more "primitive."  What I found out that means is that we had fire-rings for campfires and "compost toilets," which I should've taken a picture of because it was pretty freaking hilarious.  It was a box, with a toilet seat on top of it, and an "enclosure" that was only three walls.  3 walls.  No roof.  If you are walking toward the river you can see right on in there.  But, if you are walking away from the river, you can totally see the person's face...peering up and over the "wall."  Unfortunately for us and the hilarious stories that could have ensued, the toilet was closed for composting.  So, it was "find a bush" type of camping.

No toilet.  No water.  The only available water source was at the first campsite.  "What about the river?!" you may ask.  And I shall answer with:  

1)  We were told to NOT drink the river water, even with a filtration system and iodine tablets.

2) While I was thinking that maybe they were being a bit dramatic with #1, I saw for myself why you NEVER drink that water:  Cows.  Hundreds of cows standing in the river.  Pooping.  'Nuff said.

Now, Ricci is a very super duper outdoorsy person.  This woman can camp and do all sorts of outdoorsy stuff without batting an eye.  So, she was also all sorts of prepared and had a 5 gallon jug of water, in addition to us all having bottles of water.  But, it was so freaking hot that first day that we had to be careful with our water consumption, as we only had about 4 gallons left for 4 people and 2 dogs for our second day.  Surrounded by water, can't drink it.    That is called torture, Mother Nature.  Thanks for that.

I will now cease and desist my whining....but only because of this:

View from camp on our second night

We didn't line them up by size this night.  We had to pick the places were there was a lack of cow poo.  That's my (borrowed from Ricci) tent to the left.  :)

I may have lied to you as I have one more complaint.  Ants, who had evidently been living in our canoe, made their home in my sleeping pad.  Big fat angry red ants.  We see them on the prairie all the time and they are very quick to attack and bite, and they made their home in my sleeping pad.  We had to scrape the pad against a tree to get the ants and their larvae off of my stuff.  Then when I went to sleep, I found four more freaking ants in my sleeping bag.  

Okay, now I'm done whining.  Our second night was pretty uber exciting as there was an all-night thunderstorm.  And take one more gander at that picture of our camp the second night....we're under trees.  Sadly, it was too late to move when the storm hit, so we dealt with it.  Luckily no lightening hit the trees, nor did any branches fall on us.  The next morning dawned bright and clear, and we headed out early.  The thing was though, we were all done (read: so over) with canoeing.  But we had 20 miles to go, so we went....we didn't have any other choice.  You see, even if we had really wanted to quit, we were miles from anything except prairie and cows.  

There is NOTHING out here for as far as the eye can see.  Even with my glasses on.

Luckily, this part of the trip was on a Missouri River that actually wanted to move.  We even had a couple of "rapids," if you can call them that.  The canoes bumped a little.  Regardless, we were still over it.  This happened a lot and for considerable periods of time:

And here we have Ricci, demonstrating the appropriate way to canoe when one is fed up with the river.

Even Liam was tired.  (P.S.  Isn't his life-jacket adorable!?!?!?!  I love him!)

You've no idea how happy I really was just floating and not rowing  (and I am clearly sitting backward in the front of the canoe....it was far more comfortable for my butt)

  

So, we floated a ways and finally realized we had maybe 2 miles left, so the rowing recommenced.  I had this strange idea that when we got to the take-out point we would stop and take pictures or relax for a moment, or something.  But no.  We saw the bridge (read:  civilization and air conditioning and water and food) and rowed like the river monsters were chasing us.  We got there, pulled the canoes out of the water, unloaded our gear, put it in the truck, and were driving back to Havre within 15 minutes.  No joke.  We did not stop to gander at anything.  It was unload the canoes and head out.  We were tired, our arms hurt, our backs hurt, our asses hurt, even our hands hurt, it was hot, we were all sun-burned, we were freaking done.  It was so nice to sit in the truck with padded seats and AC.  

Even Liam was worn out:

Sleepy puppy!  Bella was still going strong, though...you
can see her hunting cars behind Liam.

In hindsight, and after sleeping in a cozy bed, I realized that it was a lot of fun!  We rowed 48 miles in a day and a half.  And since only Ricci had ever been canoeing before, it is safe to assume that we were awesome.  Be inspired.  

We even saw a few interesting things....besides cows pooping in the river.  First, there was the Seven Sisters rock formation in the White Cliffs area:

Gosh, it is a pretty picture, but you can't see the Sisters all that well....they are near the center.
What you CAN see is the lack of river movement.

Now, I had gotten over the views pretty quickly on the first day.  Staring at rock formations and mountains is only fun and interesting for a short period of time.  Then I saw this!!!!!!!!

Historic archaeology stuff!!  And a non-moving river!

That would be an abandoned farmhouse.  I didn't get up close to it, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was a homestead house.  I was surprised, though, by the random power lines, which made me think that the house was newer.   Then I realized that while I was distracted by the old house, there was a large, currently occupied farm/ranch on the other side of the river.  So that was where the power lines went. 

In short, if you are ever near Big Sandy, Montana, you should get camping gear and canoe down the Missouri River.  I recommend doing the 48 miles in 3 days rather than 2, and spend some time hiking through the BLM lands.  Oh, and take a crap ton of water!