Winter on the Bitterroot

A few recent photos

Fire, Fish and Snow

Some pics of the Kootenai Creek Fire, fish caught at the B&B and our first snow of the season, which will hopefully put the fire out.

Bear Creek, Bitterroot Mountains

Did some Crik fishin' yesterday.

Fish

A few fishy pictures snapped on the river in front of the B&B this morning.

Kootenai Creek Fire

While doing a little fishing this afternoon, I looked up at the fire and there were huge plumes of flame clearly visible from the river near the B&B. I snapped these with my cell phone, but they do not do justice to the amazing huge flames that can be seen from miles away.

Pontoon Boat Day

I had a chance to float the river from the B&B to the Stevi bridge today. It was great. I threw one of the cruiser bikes in the back of the pickup and drove to the bridge. I left the truck there and rode the bike back to the B&B. That took about a half hour. I packed a lunch and rolled my pontoon boat down to the river using the special wheel assembly that I made myself by gluing together some PVC pipe and fittings. I started floating at about 1pm. At about 1:30 I stopped on a secluded sand bar and ate my lunch of sandwich, pretzels and beer. I watched some large trout feeding nearby and tried a few lazy casts. Back in the water I came to a pod of feeding trout and caught one while I was floating. I pulled over and fished from shore for a while and caught a beautifully colored cutthroat, about 12 inches. I found an abandoned cooler roped to an inner-tube and another inner-tube near the river bank. The cooler had trash and a few unopened beverages in it. I left it all there, thinking that someone was probably coming back to retrieve it. I wonder what the circumstances were? Hope everyone was OK. I floated on down to the bridge and took a nice swim with some little kids near the take-out. The wheel assembly worked great to roll the boat up to the pickup. I was back at the B&B by 3 pm. I should do this every day!

Floatin' the Bitterroot

When the temperature soars into the 90's, it seems that the whole valley heads for the river, especially on a Sunday afternoon. I snapped this photo of a group of rafters that stopped in front of the B&B for a while on Sunday (with my cell phone). What a great way to spend a hot afternoon. The River is fishing great and who can resist a dip in the refreshing water when it is sooo hot!

Waders

It is great to see our fishing guests drying their waders on our deck railing again. Lots of waders have dried on that railing over the past few summers. The fishing is really picking up now with warm dry weather and clear water in the River. I fished in front of the B&B last night and there were at least 6 different hatches going on a the same time. Bugs everywhere and fish rising all around me, but I could not find the bug they were eating. The skeeters were eating me, so I gave up after I caught one fish, a whitefish!

Riding 4 Hope

We recently donated a room to the Riding4Hope team. They are two 16-year-old identical twins and their father who are riding bicycles coast to coast, about 4,000 miles, in 43 days. Their support vehicle driver, Skip, stayed with us for the night, while the riders stayed at the Stevensville Hotel. The team is raising funds and awareness for the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound, where they live, and the Wounded Warrior Project. Check out their website and daily updates of their progress at http://www.riding4hope.org/.

Happy July 4th to Everyone!

Happy Independence Day! Our busy season is upon us! All four rooms at the B&B are full for 4 out of the next 5 nights and we have guests every night for the next 10 nights. All of the summer weekends are filling up fast. We are so happy to have so many great visitors! Thanks for all of your patronage. Saturday is the annual July 4th Stevensville Pignick where the whole town shows up for a pot luck and the local emergency services folks cook up some mighty fine rosted pork. Here are a few pics from last year.

Bicyclists Visit

We had a group of bicyclists from the Chigago area visit the Bed and Breakfast yesterday. It was rainy, so it was good that they were able to hang out on the porch, out of the weather. There were eight guys, all of them at or near retirement age. Two of our rooms were reserved, so they stayed in the other two rooms using cots and a blow-up bed. Two individuals pitched tents in the front yard. We had to feed our guests (11 total) in shifts this morning, because everyone could not be seated at the table at the same time. We served Apple Oat Cakes, chicken-artichoke-smoked gouda cheese sausage, fresh ground Indonesian coffee, and fresh cantelope. Mmmm.

Cottonwood "ship"

We were sitting in the den with some friends the other night and one of them noticed this big tree floating down the runoff-swollen river. We ran outside on the deck and snapped a few photos and this video. It looked like a ship floating by.

I made my first-ever backcountry ski trip on the last day of April, 2009 (Thursday). I skied with my friend Cathy Locatelli, who is the daughter of Mario Locatelli, known as the Montana Mountain Goat. Mario has recently published a book, The Mountain Goat Chronicles, that Cathy helped write, about his life, and his passion for climbing and skiing many of the tallest peaks in Montana and around the world. My wife Shelley and I served on the Lost Trail Ski Patrol with Cathy and her sister Angela, about 20 years ago. I had a difficult time keeping up with Cathy, a seasoned backcountry skiier who learned well from her dad about how to climb up and ski down a mountain. We skied the chute above the Grubstake Restaurant on the face of the Bitterroots just west of Hamilton, MT. Looking down at Hamilton and the Bitterroot River, we were skiing about 6 inches of light fluffy powder. Simply amazing!

Spring Runoff 2009

The runoff has officially started. The River is muddy and has come up quite a bit in the last few days.

What is wrong with this sign?

I walk past this sign almost every day. I just noticed something. Read the last line regarding the Cemetery hours.

Spring with Ziggy

Over this past weekend, my big brother Chris and his wife Carol brought their new dog, Ziggy, over to get acquainted with our dog Tara. Ziggy is a 4-month old Cairn Terrier weighing in at about 12 lbs. Tara is our ultra-friendly pit, weighing in at about 55 lbs. The two terriers hit it off splendidly and we had a great weekend in the warm spring sunshine. Ziggy is a much better lap dog than Tara.

Montana Telemark Skiing

I decided to learn to tele ski this winter. I enrolled in a clinic at our local area, Lost Trail Powder Mountain with some friends from Stevensville. It has been great fun and I am starting to be able to link tele turns on the groomed runs. After a 16-inch snow at Lost Trail we attempted to ski some tracked bumps on a steeper run, and I learned just how many ways you can fall on tele skis without serious injury. Here are a few pictures taken at Blacktail Mountain Ski Area, a few hours drive to the north, during a temperature inversion. Driving up to the ski area we popped out of the gloom into bright sunshine and we could look down on the sea of fog with only the highest mountain tops poking out into the sunshine. Flathead Lake is out there under the fog somehwere.