Mid-July is getting Hot

Hello All!! I'm back to blogging for a bit. The summer is chugging right along and I am getting better and better each day. At what? Well I guess guiding in general and river boarding. As of tonight July 21st I can officially role a kayak. I got it on my second try and it was awesome. Everybody was like "WHAT THE HELL, HOW DID YOU DO THAT AND ON YOUR 2ND TRY"! Needless to say it was a cool feeling of saving yourself from drowning upside down. After that I was able to do it like six more times. It is pretty sweet!! Now I'm planning on going kayaking as much as I can.

So I am getting excited for Sunday when I get to pick up MOM and DAD and ALLISON at the airport in Billings!! Sorry everyone else that I don't get to see you, but you gotta buy a plane ticket or just drive really fast. I think the plan is to visit Yellowstone and maybe the grand tetons and fish and raft andeat and go in the boiling river.

Interesting thing as well.....I got a nice black eye from playing a softball game in the park. I was playing 1st base and I got low to catch the ball but it took a bounce right over my glove and nailed me right in the eye. Such a great feeling......NOT!! Everyone was like oooooohh right away and I was like "shit everyone is going to make a big deal out of it, sweet" And sure enough when the game ended (we got our butts kicked,) the team did the cheer to my black eye. All in all the game was still fun. So I will post some pictures of things.....so take a look.

Proof that I am, infact, a Guide

I just posted some pictures that our photographer takes on all the customer runs. There are a fun variety of shots, as well as families. There are a couple of pictures of me river boarding through the picture waves. River Boarding is where you gear up with a wet suit, dry top, gloves, helmet, swim fins and ultimately, a board. It is quite the workout that's for sure. I was exhausted after the first mile of kicking. The water temperature was around 53 degrees and it was on the 4th of July.

There is also another picture of me helping to dig a hole for a tree we planted in the back of the office. So, enjoy the pictures and I'll try to keep more coming!

Hike to Black Mt. and Pine Lake

Sunday June 21st I decided to skip out on my 4:30 standby to go hiking with Mark, Kevin and Jen. We went up into the Western Beartooth mountains which was the best hike thus far. We scaled up around 4000 feet and got to the lake that sat at 9032 feet. And let me tell you it was no easy feet. Mark and I decided to bring our fishing poles because it was said that this lake had some of the best fishing in it.

When we finally reached the top after a good 4hrs of hiking we realized that the lake was still frozen. I know!! what the heck....its the middle of June and still frozen over!!? I guess that's the mountains for ya. None the less there was some open spots of water where we could still cast. So after a couple of casts there was no luck and to make things even better I got a nice birds nest in my line. EVEN AT 9000+ FEET I CAN'T ESCAPE BIRD NESTS!!! GOD!!! But I eventually fixed the problem like I always do and took a couple more casts and of course caught nothing. It was still a great place to fish though. There couldn't have been a better scene.

Other things on the way up were two really cool water falls and some smaller crystal clear lakes. A really cool part of the hike was the fact that we had to trudge through snow and we even lost the trail at certain points. The coolest part of the snow was the descent. We slid down the snow sheets to make the drop a little quicker. It was hilarious whatching everyone ski on the bottom of their hiking boots and trying to stay up. All in all the best hike so far even though we didn't catch any fish.

Yellowstone Hike from Blacktail to Gardiner

On Monday, seeing that i had no boats to take out, went with Pam and Derek on a 14 mile hike in Yellowstone. We started at west Blacktail and hiked North to meet up with the Yellowstone river and followed it back to Gardiner. It was a sight to see! Walking through huge canyons and seeing awesome creeks and falls was and adventure to say the least. I have some pictures that I'll put up so you guys can see. I also took some awesome video of the river, but I can't figure out how to post that yet. We say a Bull Elk driving through mammoth and then saw some prong horn antelope. On the hike we also saw some Elk antler sheds and a Marmot. It was one of the funniest animals peeking over the rocks at us.
We stopped and had lunch at a waterfall which was Deer Creek that was eventually meeting up with the Yellowstone river. From there we crossed the Yellowstone River VIA a suspension bridge and took a photo of all of us(which I will Post). From then on we followed the river back to town stopping at all the sweet rapids that were probably class IV and V. Towards the end of the hike it started to rain and we got bogged down with mud on the bottom of our shoes. It made the walk back much more intense as we frequently stopped to scrap the mud from our shoes on nearby rocks.
We finally made it back to town and by that time my knee was sore enough that i just laid down and didn't get up until we had our meeting at 6:30. The meeting pertained to facts about the yellowstone that we could tell our customers on the boats. Geology, plants, animals, history, etc it was a really cool meeting.
Thats about it for now and I will try to put up as many pictures as i can .

Its Official!

Well, I am finally a raft guide as of Thursday the 11th of June!! It is the 16th right now and so far have taken three customer boats out (two today). Everything is going great and every time I get out on the water I feel much more comfortable.
I have met some interesting customers most of which are European. I took some people from Belarus and Serbia. Today I took some people from Holland and the whole time on the water they were speaking Dutch. I never figured out if they were talking trash about me, but the whole time I was with them I wanted to say..."Hey,....I don't speak freaky deaky dutch!" Some other people I took down were from Houston and Miami, so I could understand them very well. Business is going better now that people are traveling and it can only get better and busier from here on out.

Snow in June

So this morning I woke up to snow falling down just after it being like 75 degrees two days ago!! I took a cool picture of the mountains I always see with a fresh layer of snow covering the trees. If you look at the picture you can see the defined line of where they snow was staying because of the colder elevation.

Well, no boats today obviously. No one wants to go on the river when its 39 degrees outside!! So i spent my time today sleeping and watching Transformers. I can't wait until the next one comes out so I can go be a nerd and travel up to Bozeman to see it in theaters. Well I wish I had more to write, but it has been a slow day and its cold out so until next time.

Meeting Family

Another day, another turkey boat. That puts me at three so far and hopefully I'll only need one more before I can check off and start making some real money. Not just money or beer that you get as a tip.....but the real dough. Even though beer is a great tip.

Ironically, two days ago, one of the older raft guides Sam said he saw my cousin over at the Tumbleweed book store. He was telling me this early in the morning just after we had a nice night of drinking heavily. I'm like "Sam your crazy...you did not see my cousin"! Blah Blah Blah....but when one of the girls (Jen) came up and asked me if i met up with my cousin yet I'm like, "ok what the hell is going on"? So i did some investigating and found out my cousin Katie was in Gardiner, MT getting a cup of coffee. So I biked around the city to see if i could find her. Of course i didn't find her so i called Allison my sis to see if she could get her number. Long story short I got her number, called her and she said they were in the park(who is they I'll get to that later). So we talked and decided to grab a beer later that evening.

So they got back into town and ate at Helens Hamburger Place, which i found out has the best hamburgers in the west. They are the size of your head and you get a lot of fries with it. So i walk into Helens and who do I see, But Katie Bain from L.A. and my aunt Sarah whom i haven't seen in like 15 years. So we talked and caught up on why in the heck we were all in the same little town in Montana.

Turns out Katie is making her way back home to De Pere, WI and then down to Tennessee and then back to L.A. on the 16th of June. Sarah is driving with her and i found out she was here with some famous guy Jim Halfpenny helping him track Grizzley Bears and Wolves. How sweet is that!! She showed me a cast of a bear paw print that she made and one of a wolve that was right next to it (they got them from the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone).

So after i saw where they were staying, which was like 5 blocks away from me....yeah i know!!!! we went off to the K-Bar for some beer. We continued to talk about life and siblings. I especially enjoyed of how jealous they were of me and my summer job. Yeah....life is good! So after making them feel bad about being able to give them a free raft ride down yellowstone and talking about the crazy drunks at the bar we parted ways. All in all a funny and crazy coincidence.

Becoming a Guide

Well it has been a week and a half so far since arriving to Gardiner, MT. I have done many ride alongs so far, as well as two turkey boats (which are free raft rides to those who want them). Everything is going well, I am living with Pat and Derrick in one cabin which is sort of connected to two others. Its funny that we are all in the same place because we are all from the midwest.

Other raft guides are Jaceulyn (aka Q), Pam, Mary, Kevin, Marc, Scott (aka Duder), Anna, Ryan, Josh, Sam, and Julie.

The other day six raft guides along with my self went on the 35 mile float down the Yellowstone River from McConnell to Immigrant. It took a good six hours or so, but with beer and a potato gun for company it made the trip go a little faster. There is a picture posted of me, derrick, pat, and pam on the raft. You can tell we are all having a pretty good time.

June 13th there is a raft race on the river in which our company(MWW) competes with four other company's here in gardiner. It is a good 4 mile sprint through class four rapids and finishing off at Tom Miners bridge. From what I have been hearing I won't be able to feel my arms for a while once the race is finished. I'm kind of excited for it though....is that weird? So that is something i am really looking forward to.

The town of Gardiner which i realized is very small and has a population of only 851 people. But i think in the summer that has to reach over 1000. There are a lot of great places to eat here such as the K-Bar, The Raven Pub and grille, The Silvertip, Helens drive through and La Town. Each is good in its own way. K-Bar is great for pizza and The Raven I hear is great for steaks and corn on the cob. Silvertip is a good mexican food place and Helens is great for Bison Burgers. To be honest all i haven't tried the raven yet or Helens, but i soon will.

Well my mind has stopped flowing from things that have happened so i will cut it off there. Keep checking in....who knows what I'll post next.

Making it to Montana

Friday 15^th - We then departed the park after giving some portly woman a jump start that was next to us in camp. She left a light on in her car and came crying over to me…PLEASE, PLEASE, strong man there, can you give me a jump and I said, “yeah whatever, sure” Which was true but but maybe I didn’t use those words. Then we hit the road and made it into Montana. We had to stop in Billings though because of a cabelas store that just opened and Mike wouldn’t take no for an answer. After that we continued to drive and started seeing Rocky Mountains and Mike and I started screaming like 16 years old girls at a boy’s band concert. Then we had lunch just before Bozeman at a rest stop and who do you suppose we see, but the same portly woman who we gave a jump start that morning! What are the odds of that?! Yuck. Then we all made it into Bozeman we I had the sad part of saying goodbye to ole D.R. and Mikey. I made it on my own to MWW and pitched a tent and crawled into the sleeping bag.

Saturday 16^th - I woke up with frost on the outside of my tent. It must have gotten down to atleast 28 degrees that night, but I am just estimating. The 1^st day of swiftwater rescue was interesting. Mostly everyone seemed to have awesome gear except me, but I didn’t care. The ladies still shuddered at my good looks in a tight wet suit. That day we learned how to throw rope bags to swimmers as well as learning how to use the current to swim out to unconscious victims. Others things we learned were how to move as one unit into a shallow river with a swift current. This is used in a scenario where you need to reach a victim caught on a rock or stuck out in the river. We also learned how to tie special knots and how to rig up a “Z line” to get boats or raft unstuck. This is the day where I acted as live bait and had to swim to unconscious victims and get them back to shore. I actually saved two in the same rescue operation. After that I was exhausted and said, “I can’t get anyone else, just leave the rest and we’ll all go get a beer”! That all finally ended. Sorry no pictures of the swift water class because I was constantly wet.

Sunday 17^th - This was the last day of swiftwater rescue. This was the best day by far. The weather was perfect and I wasn’t completely frozen. We got to do zip lines today where you would run from the upstream side of the river to the downstream side with the current. So you would hook on with a pulley and grab the rope and go! The rest of the day after lunch we did rescue scenarios where the instructors would drive down the road and four minutes later we would drive down and respond to the scene they presented use with. We did this all the way down the Gallatin River back to the MWW office. Everyone got a run at being team leader and my scene had a guy caught between a rock and a canoe. Another guy was stuck

The Trip

Wednesday-This was the first leg of the trip all the way to henry south Dakota. We arrived at 5 o clock and walley and Rita were there to welcome Dr. Reynders, mike and myself. We had a show and tell of walleys firearms right off the bat as well a couple of beers. We had salmon shark for dinner which was unbelievably good. After that mike and I walked around and kicked up some pheasant, which are running all over the place!! Then we called it a night by watching the movie “Taken” which I had to buy! Liam Neson is the man in that movie!

Thursday- was the drive to North Dakota and into the bad lands. We got there around 3:30 and immediately upon entering the park(Theodore Roosevelt National Park) we saw a Bison rolling in the dirt. I have a video and some pictures that I will post. Some other animals that we saw were prairie dogs, mule deer, wild horses, and some antelope. I have plenty of pictures of all. That afternoon Dr. Reynders, Mike and myself took a hike through the park and took some great pictures on random peaks throughout the bad lands. We had hotdogs for dinner and ate theym along the Missouri river. Then ole D.R. turned in for the night and Mike and I played some sweet tunes on the guitar and uke to put him to sleep.

NIght Before Departure

So it is Tuesday the 12th of May and the last night in good ol' Wisconsin! Goodbye all and farewell....i leave a modest Wisconsin boy and plan to return a Montana Mountain River Guide MAN!! I will be convoying with My good friends Mike Reynders and "Balls to the Walls" Ole D.R. I went to Canada with Ole D.R. and my guess is he will do most of the driving and Mike will sleep. So Wednesday morning we shove off to Henry, South Dakota. The next morning we well take North Dakota all the way to Medora. There we plan to camp out in the badlands in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (south unit). After we rough it out there, Friday morning we will head into Montana and that afternoon get setup along the Gallatin river somewhere. Then the training begins!!

So this is the plan as of now and hopefully i will have some internet available to keep people updated.