I flew from Seattle to Boise on the morning of Sept 2nd.  Z and Tiny E picked me up at the airport and took me to a great Mexican restaurant in a small community between Boise and Nampa.  I had a couple Negra Modelos along with some fantastic cabrito tacos.  It was a great way to start our trip.  We spent a few hours at the house talking fishing and places we might want to go before heading over to the Capt's for a rib dinner.  The consumption of ribs was only exceeded by the downing of malt beverages so Z and I needed to get back to the house to sleep for a few hours prior to our scheduled midnight departure.  Our plan, one of the few of the trip, was to leave in the middle of the night so we could arrive at Craig mid-morning on Monday. 

Sleep was difficult but we did manage to rest up for several hours.  Apparently, we each wandered down to the living room to see if the other was awake.  Unfortunately, we never did it at the same time.  Still, alarms went off and bags were packed in time to hit the road at midnight.  The moon was fairly bright that night and we had a nice drive.  At least it was nice for us... less so for one skunk and two birds who tragically crossed our path with little advance warning.

We stopped for a while at Craters of the Moon to stretch and do a little star gazing.  Z pulled out the binoculars and tried to teach me a little astronomy.  I think we were right around the ID/MT border when dawn arrived.  As the morning brightened we could see that there was still quite a bit of smoke in the air from nearby wildfires.

A smoky dawn near the ID/MD border.




Seeing the sun rise made us realize how hungry we were getting.  After a quick look at the map, we decided to pull into Dell, MT and see if the Calf-A was open.  Sadly, we were just too early.  We have been told by people in the know (our father and his fishing buddy The Deacon) that the Calf-A puts up a great breakfast.  Another quick check with the navigator showed that the Melrose Bar & Cafe was the next logical option for a fisherman's breakfast.  We pulled into Melrose and parked in front of the cafe.  A sign said it was open but everything looked pretty quiet.  We walked in only to be told that the place wouldn't be open for another hour or so.  Once again, we had to do the walk of shame back to the car.  At this point we decided just to drive into Butte and eat there.  Surely, it would be easy to find a place open for breakfast in a town as large as Butte!.  Actually... not so much.  We exited the highway and drove into downtown Butte sure that we would have several options to choose from.  It turns out that they have a lot of Irish bars but few cafes that open early.  We were starting to think it was going to have to be a McMorning when we finally found a restaurant open down near the interstate.

Mid-morning had us crossing the Missouri via the new bridge at Craig and making the turn north along the frontage road.  A few minutes later we stopped the car at our Dad's place.

Morning on the Missouri River.


Next up... the 3wt sees some preliminary action on the Missouri and strikes fear into the cutthroats of Belt creek.