For many years now The General and I have I have discussed hitting the river sometime later in the year if we have a substantial amount of rain to bring or keep the river's water level up, and this year turned out to be a year in which the plan finally came to light. I guess we had decided early on in the summer we would go no matter how much rain, but we were blessed with more rain than we have had in as long as I can remember. Rain came in droves and kept the level up that we decided sometime in late June that in August we would put our canoe in Dora Lake, the Bigfork's source, and canoe to the first crossing on Highway 6. As the summer sped by we decided that the last weekend in August, before I had to go back to work at the school, would be when we would take four days to enjoy a passion we both share, the simplicty of a Bigfork River trip.
It started out spectacularly, the weather was a dream,lots of sun and a touch of a breeze, something we were grateful for since the first leg of the journey consisted of us having to paddle our way across the main part of Dora lake to the headwaters. We loaded my Core Craft canoe with the bare essentials, barring the padded cots we had for sack time. There was also a slight change on the dynamics of this journey. For the first time in his life, The General choose to play the role of the navigator while I stayed with my roles as the stern-man. Needless to say I did a majority of the paddling.Once across Dora Lake, we came to the river entrance and noticed a great big gob of dead rushes that blocked our entrances. We built up some speed before we hit the mess and lost a lot of it on our initial contact. To sum up the experience it was like trying to paddle through a patch of wet cement. However, being the pro's that we are, it was little more than a minor speed bump. From there we continued to a tremendous amount of low lying country that was nothing but wild rice fields. So much so that we really didn't come to their end until the first camp site...Harrelson. There isn't a lot to comment on for this part of the trip because the scenery didn't change a lot and there was a little more work in the stroking that I would have liked, but nothing we couldn't handle. The most excitment came when we were forced to choose one of three paths and ended up choosing a dead end to where we had to break new trail through the rice field to refind the river. That a a point when we were using pop cans to relieve ourselves and a great gust of wind came up and almost barrel rolled us. I swear the water was a mere inch from coming in wher the wind tipped us to the left. Being experts our bodies instinctivley shifted weight to compensate for the loss of balance. After our hearts slowed we had a good chuckle, another beer and headed on down the river to find our first campsite of the trip.
Within a few hours we were where we wanted to be...Harrelson Campsite. The site was a true gem with a generous chunck of soft green grass and plenty of space for a large group of canoeists to camp. The only real downfall was that the landing and the campsite were a good 100 yards apart. The General, however, took it upon himself to break through the rushes to land the canoe closer to the camp ground.We made camp and tipped a few cold ones before having a meal of brats and chips. Then since the General had been up for almost 48 hours, we crashed and got a good nights rest for the second leg of the trip.
Till then I will remain...Crazy Joe
