Up and busy rather early this morning. Tom and Donna went over to shoot an early round of golf so it was just me and the cats and dog for a couple of hours. Had a nice breakfast and read the paper and then got started in packing up those final odds and ends that always seem to wait until the very end.

    Once Tom was home we went ahead and started loading boats on the vehicles. He is taking two on their van since we would have to transfer it to their car at the takeout point later on anyway. I got my rack put back on the truck, and then we got my boat all loaded up and tied down also. It always looks good and feels good when you can see the boats on the car and know that you will be heading out on a new adventure in only a few more hours.

   Once the boat was on and tied down I backed the truck up to Steph's garage and we preceded to load up a bunch of our gear that was all ready to go. We put a lot of our personnel stuff on the floor in the back seat, I have a 4 door pickup, and then put the dog bed in on top of all of it. I think the dog is going to have a pretty cushy ride tomorrow. Also threw the 3 coolers in the back so I could run over and pick up the ice Marge and George let me freeze in their freezer. Did that late this evening after it had cooled off a little bit. Pretty much filled the bottom of the coolers with ice jugs so we will have to see how much of the rest of the space is going to be taken up with actual food. We will also have a few extra gallons of ice water to start out with, but there is never a problem with having to much ice, or water, or ice water when the temperature is nearing 100 and you are paddling pretty hard.

   So we will be up early and headed for Montana around 6:00 in the morning. There will be six of us who will be going up to do a 150 mile canoe trip on the upper Missouri. We will put in on Sunday morning at the boat ramp in Fort Benton and continue down the river until we hit Kipp State Park 7-8 days later. I can't remember if the whole trip, from Denver to Denver, will be 10 days or 12 days, I'm just sure that like always, it won't be long enough.

   Needles to say I'll be off the net for at least that long if not longer, but hope to have some stories to tell and some pictures to share when I get back. Right now though it is time to go make a last minute check of things and then get some sleep. Lucky for me it rained earlier so it is now nice a cool and fresh smelling. Looking forward to some nice rain, thunder and lightning storms in the tent again. It's goin' to be fun.