Floating the Madison

Yesterday I did my first river float in Montana. I have floated the rivers in Texas before, but this is a bit different. It's a lot longer and much cleaner than the rivers in Texas.

Prior to the float I had to go and buy a new pair of swimtrunks as I can't find my speedos. No, not those kind of speedos....it's just the same company. Board shorts seem to be popular, and I like them, but not for swimming. Go figure.

So we go to load up on beverages at the local gas station. I am without my huge-ass sippy cup because I left it in someone else's car. So I grab the biggest drink they have and make a Wild Turkey and Coke. My friend does the same thing and everyone else loads up the cooler with ice and beer. I heard a rumor that there was some water in there, but I was unable to verify this.

While shopping for supplies we happen to notice that a couple of the Baldwin brothers are there. Naturally it was the women that noticed. We could have cared less. "Oh...that's...um...nice." As it turns out they floated the same river as we saw them a few times throughout the day.

We had a good time floating the river. It's about a 4-hour float and there isn't any part of the river that I remember where you couldn't stand up. In fact, there were times when we were dragging bottom.

My friend, Dusty, and I were on Cooler duty. We kept it floating upright and got beverages in and out of the cooler for everyone. The only problem is that when I wasn't on cooler duty we somehow ended up upside down (Dusty and I both) and then I saw all the stuff floating down the river. This upset me a bit as I do not like to litter in such a beautiful area.

We were able to recover most of the beverages and ended the float with some minor scrapes, bruises, and good sunburns.

Afterwards we did a small cookout at the casa. Everyone was pretty whooped.....