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June 22 2002

Distance Traveled: 1.0    Total Miles: 1.0

Location: Little Missouri River - Stealth Camp.

Entry:

Today started at 0630 with an early wake up (at least for the kids it's early) and breakfast, then a quick goodbye to Kristi and her parents who were visiting.

The drive was fairly uneventful except for driving to Glenwood to get a topo map only to find that the NFS office is closed on the weekends. This made for a 36 mile trip out of our way for nothing. The trail was easy to find although it seemed like it took forever on the dirt roads traveling at 25 MPH. But eventually we hit it exactly where the guide said we would.

We took about 1/2 hour to adjust our loads, take a "before" picture, and play in the Little Missouri River which is hardly a creek at this point. Just prior to departing 3 guys on 4 wheelers came by and cooled off in the "river" right as we were starting our crossing of the mighty Missouri.

We walked down the trail, stopping to re-adjust Matt's and Karen's packs every 1/4 mile. Both of them seemed to have gotten a little soft since last time I took them hiking. I took these opportunities to scout the sides of the trail for a good stealth camp. At about 1 mile I finally found a very good one on the far side of the river on an abandoned road that appears to be someone's old hunting camp site. There is a fire ring, a plywood table, and a hang built here at a good wide spot on the creek. While putting in camp, Karen found a great spot just down the creek with a nice waist deep pool, and a couple of rocks that made a nice bench to sit in the creek on.

Dinner was great (bean soup and pudding) but the kids couldn't eat all theirs. Donald is doing good, much better than Matt or Karen. Because we did an easy mile, the end of the day has been spent catching crawfish and attempting to catch the small fish in the creek by hand. The kids are excited to be hiking, but we will se how well they do tomorrow when we really start doing a few miles.

Tonight I did a lot of refreshing their skills and adjusting their packs. For stealth campers they are still too loud, and have to be reminded about simple stuff like water treatment, dish washing, etc. Matt is really trying, while Karen is more "on a date" LOL!

There is supposed to be 98% illumination tonight, maybe a night vision class would be fun.

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