Montana Round Two

Did you know that even if you are canoeing 104 miles that if you pretty much only eat trail mix heavy on the m&m's, you are going to come home weighing more then when you left?  Me neither.

So  much for my "lose weight cause I am practically starving in the wilderness" plan.

Mostly this is because we pretty much floated the first 50 miles.  I am so ashamed to admit it.  We would have gone faster but my dad had this huge canoe/boat cross and it didn't move very fast, even if you actually paddled.  So we drifted, and I tried to overcome my desire to be doing something, anything, besides sitting.  Most of the time I looked at nature, and man was it beautiful. Sometimes I read my kindle, good stories like Knights Templar conspiracies.  I had several worthy books on there too, a couple from Francis Chan (famous for crazy love) and a whole slew of classics, but nothing says Montana Outback like crazy Romans and Popes.

Also, if you and your spouse are not exactly compatible in certain ways, for example, I am firstborn, Chris is the baby, you can come up with scenarios on your own, then you may be slightly irritated with each other on an event like this.  Basically, because Chris is bigger and stronger, he sat at the back and steered the canoe.  Only he didn't really.  We would be sideways, drifting down the river and not being able to look where we are going because he wasn't steering.  And then I would say something like, please steer the canoe, and he would ignore me, so then some would say I yelled, steer the canoe!  And then Chris would say "Can't you ask nicely?"  And I would counter with "but this is the second time I asked you?!"  I discovered that not canoeing forward is a huge pet peeve of mine, ranks up their with the knife handles not all facing the same way in the block.

Anyway, here is the snake video as promised.  Mostly you can hear my voice, and a smattering of everyone else.  It's a little shaky in the beginning, but I promise it gets better.  Notice that Chester never strikes.  This is apparently because they use heat sensing to know when something is around, and since the stick is essentially the same temp as the surroundings, he could care less.

Right now, just in case you were wondering, the snake skin is sitting in a glass jar filled with salt water in our bathroom.  In a few more days we are going to coat it in glycerin and then nail it to a board, put another one on top of it and let it sit for 30 days.  Then we should have a supple snake skin to have at our house.  You want to know what the best part about how we learned that is?  At this little store Chris asked if they knew anyone who could tell him how to tan a snake skin and they gave him a phone number.  When Chris called it a woman answered and he explained why he was calling and asked to talk to her husband.  She was real quiet and then told him that actually, it was her who did the snake killing and tanning!  I laughed real hard at that one and I think that there is some serious leverage for that being a long-term teasing Chris type item.

And here is a bunch of pictures that show all the different types of environment along the way.

Well, I guess that is a fairly good representation of what we had to look at.  That last picture is actually down in the ditch of a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere.  I can promise you that our local ditches look nothing like this!