Thursday June 12th

“I love a rainy night, I love to hear the thunder watch the lightning”- Eddie Rabbitt

Thursday started innocently enough. It ended with a bang. After a pleasant nights rest at the Garvins, Will drove Mike and I back to Lake Hauser (the other side of Canyon Ferry). We were off.

Lake Hauser is more like a really wide river with no current. We were introduced to the pleasure boater, for the most part almost all boat traffic we have experienced have been fishermen. This changed on Hauser. It can be of concern when you see a power boat speeding right at you.  Fortunately, they all saw us today.

We humped it to get to the end of Lake Hauser (to the dam) and made it around 4:00.  One of the dam workers gladly assisted us with the portage to the other side. The challenge was getting our boats and gear to the launch site which was about 300 yards downhill from the portage drop off site.  I thought I was going on a canoe adventure not a “lugging stuff back and forth type deal.”

At this point, we were ready to find a camp site. No luck. We continued to paddle until we saw lightning. Exit river right. We made the decision to setup camp on private property, probably summer joints that didn’t appear to be occupied.

The skies seemed to improve as we had dinner, no worries..after all it’s Montana. I went to sleep exhausted after a long day and woke up to my tent whipping in the wind around 1:00am. I peeked out my tent and saw some scary looking skies. I yelled out to Mike who didn’t respond. About 20 minutes later it started to rain, really rain. I mean pour. Then….boom boom boom. That’s not rain, that’s hail!!! Yes, I withstood about a 20 minute hail storm in my tent. I was certain my tent wouldn’t hold up. It did. I am not really proud of the fact that I buried my head underneath all my bags and basically cried like a schoolgirl.  Of course, no disrespect to schoolgirls intended.

Mike helped calm me down and the storm eventually passed.

Enjoy the audio. — Click here—> Rainy Night