Catching Idle Butterflies

It ain't an adventure without challenges to overcome

Murphy. He’s a sneaky one all right. But then, I wonder if Murphy had a hand in our adventures last weekend, or if it was mere stupidity.

It started out easy enough. First we dropped my Jeep off at one of the Bismarck boat ramps. That way, we had a vehicle available at the end of our trip. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anyone available to drive Dave’s truck and the boat trailer back down to Bismarck for us.

We arrived at Garrison Dam and set the boat in the water. Then at 8pm, Dave, Kyle, Rufus and I jumped in with all of our gear and headed downstream. We fished some, but the fish for some reason weren’t interested in our offerings. No big deal. This was a weekend to relax. So we floated down the river, fishing poles in hand, motor silent, letting the river determine our pace. We watched the pelicans, cormorants, seagulls, and Canada geese float and fly in a lackadaisical fashion, seemingly as unconcerned about life as we were.

Rufus had the most energy, irritating both Kyle and Dave with her curiosity as they tried to re-hook their lines. Me doing more sightseeing than fishing, I babysat her toward the end of the evening.

When dusk settled, we found a nice flat spot to set up our tents along the bank. Dave and I had just purchased a 10’x12’ dome tent; not yet having set it up. So in the dark, with only a lantern and flashlight to guide us, we managed to set it up way quicker than our old tent. Our old one was an old two-man tent called the Denver Swinger. It worked great for the last fifteen years, but we could never stand up, and with the dog now, it was simply too small.

This one is too big! It actually sleeps up to six and even has a divider to make it a two-room tent.

Funny how we get used to things and build certain habits. I found myself on my hands and knees as I made our bed and changed into warmer clothing. Only until after I finished did I realize I could stand up straight!

Since we still had a fire ban in effect, we couldn’t build a campfire. We had also eaten before leaving Bismarck, so we spent the next few hours playing with Rufus. She adores playing ‘lasertag.’ We have one of those laser pointers, only this one is designed for training dogs. It’s much brighter than the ones business people use for presentations and whatnot. Dave snakes that laser around the yard and Rufus will chase after it, and she can still go long after his wrist gets tired. This night was more of a challenge for Rufus since the grass and weeds were so tall. Instead of one dot, she’d be trying to chase after 10 or 20. Plus she had to jump over the grass instead of running all out. She didn’t care. She finally had a bigger play area than a 17’ fishing boat.

When I went to bed, I discovered we didn’t pick the best of all camping spots. Sand everywhere! A soft, silty sand that no matter how much you brush or wipe, it STAYS. Already, our tent floor was coated in it, and it had sneaked into the sleeping bags. Wee.

Rufus never before being away from home at night didn’t sleep much. Luckily she’s not a barker, so when she heard a strange noise, she either huffed at it or gave a soft growl. I was the only one who heard it, and that’s because I’m such a light sleeper. It wasn’t her huffing that woke me, but the large owl ‘whoing’ in the trees above us. I love that sound, second only to coyotes yelping. We also heard some of that right before I went to bed.

We all woke up just after dawn, and that’s when we saw Murphy had visited us during the night. Okay, not really. This was merely the result of stupidity.

Murphy can’t be held totally responsible, because we all knew Garrison Dam releases less water during the night. The river can drop as much as two feet, especially as close as we still were from the dam. The farther down the river, the less the water elevation fluctuates.

Here is the result of keeping the boat tied off too close to shore:

Invalid Photo #1004138 Invalid Photo #1004137 Invalid Photo #1004136

What we didn’t anticipate, and I could hear Murphy laughing is after we managed to push the boat back into the water without a single hernia, cooked breakfast and tore down our camp, the water had risen to almost the level it was when we parked the night before. Had we simply waited it out, we wouldn’t have exerted ourselves and wasted all that time and energy.

Unfortunately, because we did expend all that effort, we broke something very important that caused us more problems throughout the day . . .