We are always on the lookout for good places to paddle – relatively mild water and interesting things to see which usually means bodies of water that aren’t too big. We settled into the Clark Fork Drift Yard because it was at the mouth of the Clark Fork River where it came into Lake Pend Orielle. This part of the river included lots of little islands and meandering sections of river that we thought we would have fun exploring. When we were settled into our spot. We wandered around and saw the actual drift yard – a big area of water that was full of driftwood. We learned that a series of large booms had been built in the river and shuttled any trees and other large detritus that came down the mountainous creeks in the area to this one area at the mouth of the river. The logs were held here instead of being carried into Lake Pend Orielle.
Mike explored the logs a little more closely as he climbed across logs to get out to a section of dock out in the water.
The next day we headed out on our paddle boards. We explored both narrow and wider sections of the river. On one island we passed a series of houses and campsites that were only accessible by boat. The most interesting one was a very minimalist tree house – kitchen on the ground and then a spiraling rope staircase up to an upper level.
We enjoyed the warm sun as we paddled, but that night, the smoke started to come on. Over the next 24 hours, we did some upkeep on the trailer and paddleboards and watched the world around us disappear – first the far mountains, then the nearer ones; soon the individual trees across the lake were indistinguishable and then we couldn’t see anything across the lake.
We moved on to our next site at Finley Flats back in Montana. It was very surreal to park in a place that would have been quite lovely, but we could barely see through the smoke. The sun was a pale pink circle hiding in the smoky sky and we huddled up reading, waiting to see if the smoke would clear at all. We were at a bend in the river and there looked to be some interesting bluffs right across from us, but we never got to get a better look as we didn’t want to do too much in the smoke. I just kept thinking of how many people on the west coast had it so much worse than us.
We headed back to Missoula for one more night. We made some more pizza for Barb and (her) Mike, did some laundry, and Mike (mine) got his new phone up and working. Because it looked like the smoke would be sticking around this area for a while, we decided to change our plans and head south to escape into some clearer air.