The Siren Song of Mountains and Rivers

The best way to describe the feeling is contentment. I was just north of I-90 high on a ridge, parked alongside a forest road on the Idaho and Montana border lying in the dark inside the GoFastCamper (GFC) installed a few hours earlier in Bozeman, MT. After getting the combination truck topper and rooftop tent installed, I had enough daylight to do a quick evening paddle on Alberton Canyon on the Clark Fork river just west on Missoula.

This feeling of incredible contentment, lying by myself, it felt selfish to feel this way without the rest of my family, our two boys who are seven and nine, and my wife, who is surprisingly willing to entertain my harebrained outdoor exploration ideas. The three of them had flown back to the midwest to spend a week with my wife's parents at their place in northern Wisconsin on a lake. Spending summers on lakeside in the northern midwest is an experience my wife wants to share with our boys. Some of her best memories are from her experiences growing up spending weekends and summers at their cabin, "up north," from Minneapolis.

I have similar memories. My mother humored my dad's lust for doing rivers and exploring places in outdoors. Growing up in southern Missouri, this meant nearly every weekend was spent wandering north Arkansas camping out of a van and doing rivers. Summers, since they were both schoolteachers, were spent doing the same across the intermountain west and even into the Pacific Northwest.

Mountains and Rivers

Following high school I attended the University of Missouri. They offered me a running scholarship and the opportunity to compete at a very high level. Still, I spent the summers as a raft guide in Colorado sleeping in the back of a Toyota pickup truck, more-or-less doing the exact same thing as I had growing up. I could not resist the siren song of the mountains and rivers flowing out of them.

Every day after taking people down the river as a job, I went and paddled the river after work. At night I slept on National Forest land at the various primitive camping sites I knew about...falling asleep in the back of the truck listening to the breeze through the ponderosas with the rapids providing a white noise backdrop. Falling asleep in the woods, preferably next to a river, this very much is my happy place.

Enjoying rivers was a big part of the explorations growing up, and on my own in subsequent years. This affinity for exploration, enjoying the freedom of sleeping wherever the day ends on public lands, discovering and rediscovering wonderful rivers, this is something I very much want to share with our boys.

This is why I really wanted to get a vehicle capable of sleeping all four of us if necessary, but not a portable house, an RV. The F-150 with a 6.5 foot bed and the GFC enable four of us to have a dry place to sleep when needed. True, it does require tossing gear out of the bed if it is wet outside, but all our car camping gear is our rafting gear. It consists of dry boxes and bags, all easily tossed outside in wet weather if the bed of the truck needs to be used for sleeping.

The Install Trip

Although we live in Olympia, WA, I was sleeping on the border between Idaho and Montana because I was on my way home from picking up the GFC at their facility just outside of Bozeman, Montana. One way it is a 10.5 hour drive, 21 total hours of driving. I did it in one weekend.

After the installation on Saturday afternoon, I was able to get back to the other side of Missoula along the Clark Fork river early enough to paddle Alberton Gorge in the early evening. There really is something magical about being on the water in a beautiful place surfing big glassy waves.

Alberton Gorge is a complete gem. It is runnable all year long. Access is easy. If kayaking, it is possible to paddle a short section and run the shuttle on foot, which I did. Although it parallels I-90, the gorge is so deep, you have no clue the interstate is up there except for the bridges high above. Were it not roadside, it likely would be another of the Idaho multi-day classic rafting trips. It really is that good.

Alberton Gorge provided a wonderful reprieve from my marathon drive. It was an escape, a chance to surf some great waves in a wonderful place before having to get back behind the wheel and keep heading west. Even at the take out, I deliberately did not rush getting organized and back on the road, just enjoyed being there in the moment.

Back on the road following Alberton Gorge, as it was getting dark, I felt the familiar euphoric contentment I know so well. I just got off a fun river in a beautiful place. Although I do not know exactly where I am going to sleep for the night, it really does not matter. There is public land, and I have an easy way to have a bed in just a few minutes. When I got to the exit at Lookout Pass Ski area, I was tired. It was dark and there was a forest road to the north. I took the road to a pullout up on the ridge, popped my new bed up, and climbed into my sleeping bag.

Listening to the wind through the ponderosas, thinking about the experiences the boys are having right now in Wisconsin, and my experiences growing up...it became clear to me why this is so satisfying to me, and why I want so badly to facilitate experiences like this for my family. These types of experiences, a fun day on the river followed by a night in the mountains, are what make me so very happy. I want to share this. While I concede the boys may not inherit the same passion I necessarily have, I do want to share it with them, and genuinely hope they appreciate the wonderful places they will get to experience.