Monday, August 28, 2006

McDonald Creek

McDonald Creek empties into Lake McDonald, the lake where our campground was at. The lower end of it is bigger than you'd expect from something deemed a creek. Lower McDonald Creek is flies or lures only, and is a catch and release area. Easy access, as it's right near the road, and there's several good lookouts to hike around and take pictures.



Some parts more wadeable than others. Parts of the stream cut these mini gorges into the shale, so it's fairly sketchy trying to fish them. The shale is very fine grained, and once it's been polished by water it's extremely treacherous footing. But other sections are more open and flat, with more gravel than rock.




This is one of the stretches I fished. The first shot is taken from the bridge you can see upstream in the second pic. No luck with nymphs, but fishing was good with dry flies. Everything I caught was cutthroat. Very good fights for the size of the fish. Most of my catches were in the 8-10 inch range, and I got a couple around 12 or 13.


Thursday, August 24, 2006

YEEEHAAAWWW!!!!!

I was bored and found this video of Rich doing tricks on his motorcycle.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Sprague Creek

We decided to camp at the Sprague Creek campground for our Glacier trip. It's a small campground with only 25 slots, and tent camping only, no towed vehicles allowed. It's on the west side of the park on the shore of Lake McDonald, about nine miles in from the West Glacier entrance to the park. That proximity to West Glacier sometimes comes in handy as West Glacier has a laundromat and a store.

I personally like the west side of the park for camping. It's on the wetter side of the continental divide, which runs through the park. That area around Lake McDonald has a lot of creeks, and gets a fair amount of rainfall, so the forest there is much different from the drier east side of the park. Rather than the pine forests we see out here and up at Chester, the forested areas near that side of Lake McDonald are more like coastal northwestern forests. A lot of large cedar and hemlock trees, and the undergrowth is lusher. In my opinion, much nicer for tent camping. Even during the hottest part of the day, it's shady and pleasant under all those old growth trees.

Naturally as I'm taking pics of the campground Casey has to choose that moment have a giant bite of her Great Harvest cookie.




As I mentioned above, the campground sits on the shore of Lake McDonald. Here's a couple views. Good sized lake, surrounded by mountains, and the forest often runs right down to the shoreline.

Monday, August 21, 2006

We're back

We got back last night around midnight. I see you slackers have been busily updating the blog. I'll probably post some of our pics from the trip tonight. Glacier was great, I recommend you all go.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Oh juice of the Gods, give me a heart attack.

This one is for Gord.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

The countdown continues

Only a couple days until vacation. My camp knife has gone missing in action somehow, so I got to pick out a new one. I've been meaning to get a new one anyways, so good times. I also got a new fishing hat. I'll be thinking of you suckers while I'm off in Glacier getting my leg chewed off by a bear.

Casey get a camera

Casey's been jealous of the camera McKenzie got last fall, so naturaly she also asked for one for her birthday. So far her pics are often of the "pestering Sam with closeups" variety.


Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Summer vacation

Anyone going on vacation? August 12th or so we'll be going up to Glacier National Park for a week. I'm going to do most of the driving at night so that we can get there in the morning and get a good camping spot. We're leaning towards a couple campgrounds in the Lake McDonald area, either the Sprague Creek or Avalanche sites. They're west of the continental divide and have a lot of nice trees. Sprague is right on Lake McDonald, but Avalanche is closer to McDonald Creek, which I plan in trying to fish a bit.