Sun River, Rocky Mountain Front

Ed Sr. is guest writing this blog...so bare with me. Anyhow, the weather forecast for the weekend was pretty crappy to say the least. It was supposed to be high in the low 60's with wind and rain. Due to the weather forecast, our plans changed from camping in the Tobacco Roots up to the Rocky Mountain Front on the Sun River. Even after shifting from south of Helena to north, Autumn and I tried to limit the camp out to one night because of the weather, but Kim and Neil were hearing none of it as we had planned this weekend a month ago. So the Pattersons arrive at our house almost 5 minutes early on Friday (a Christmas miracle), we packed their stuff into the camper, swapped a small cooler for a larger one to accommodate the beer, and off we went. It didn't really rain much until Sunday, and it seemed to rain hardest once we got the rain shelter down and started loading up.

Kim and Autumn said they had been to this area as youths, but neither remembered it well. I had been up on the Sun River for work and knew that I wanted to come back with a fishing pole and a little more time. It was a great weekend. The wind blew like crazy, the evenings were chilly, but the fishing was great and the scenery spactacular. Great company and great food and Jr. had a great time as always. He is a camping fool.

Autumn even powered up and overcame her concerns about being in hard core griz country. We cleaned up well every night and even stored the beer/pop cooler in the camper at one point while we all went fishing. I had no fear since Selma and Maggie were there to protect us. Well, there might have also been a 357 and a can of bear spray.

We all caught fish, except for Selma and Maggie, who did their best to ruin the fishing for one and all. The Pattersons had better numbers on the fly rods, but we were happy throwing spinners when the wind was blowing.

Jr. did something wrong, so he was forced to wear a Denver Broncos hat and look sad. I'm not sure what he did, but clearly it was bad considering the punishment.

Kim and Neil searching for the monster trout.


Not a bad view from the campsite. The photo below is what we were looking at the other way.

What can I say. I was out for a stroll with Selma, and clearly in my happy place. Cheers, and wish you all could have been there with us.

**It is me. I couldn't let Ed have all of the glory. There are more fantastic photos here. Please look at them, print them out and live in their beauty, they cost us $40. I accidentally deleted them from my camera without copying them all to the computer - YIKES - so I had to download software that magically recovered them from our camera. Was it worth it? Yes. The lesson alone was worth it.