Mother’s Day Quick Day Trip

Sometimes a quick escape is needed to get away from the hustle and bustle of life. Since it was Mother’s Day my wife said we should load up the kids and the dog and escape up the river valley for a while to enjoy nature and the views. I figured this sounded good to me because we would more than likely end up cleaning the house or something like that if we stayed home. There wasn’t any hunting or any real fishing going on, besides trout anyway, so this was purely an escape trip.

The river valley goes for about 30 miles until it reaches the headwaters of the river at the glacier. The water is very cold as you would expect being that close to the glacier and with the sunny weather just starting so swimming or playing in the river for any amount of time was out of the equation. I don’t mind cold weather at all as long as it’s not raining, but cold water is a different story as it had to be near a hot tub temperature or it has to be an extreme heat wave of 75 degrees or more before I get in the water willingly.

There are many small waterfalls to see and lots of trees. It was still too early in the year for berries but it did give us a chance to look for new spots to harvest other plants later like Labrador Tea (Indian Tea) and Yarrow, providing that we could later remember where they were. Scouting out potential firewood for the year is always another perk anytime you go in the woods. Other plants such as Camas can be scouted out during the spring and marked so that they can be harvested in the fall. There are two types of Camas locally and one is the Death Camas, which as the name infers is poisonous, so marking them is crucial as both bulbs look the same when you dig them up in the fall. Camas does add good flavor to wild game steaks and other foods.

We didn’t see any big game during the midday sun so that wasn’t a surprise, but the river waters cleared up after the recent rains so we could see salmon and other fish in the deep holes in the river. The salmon looked like warmed over death so the season was definitely over as you wouldn’t want to touch any remaining half-rotten swimming fish that we saw. They were fun to watch and the trout and char were swimming around too. We walked around the river banks in a few places and my daughter looked for rocks to add to her collection. My son joined us in walking around as there is zero cell service there so phones and smartphones are just paperweights, although they do make good convenient cameras. We took scenery pictures mainly along with a few reluctant pictures of the kids.

The day was very relaxing since there was no phone service, nothing to do, no time to be anywhere, or any other worries at the moment. It is always a bummer when you leave the valley and are reminded that they have to get back to regular life and work by all of your texts and messages popping through on your phone when it finally finds a spot of service. This always reminds us of how truly blessed we are to only be a few minutes away from spots like this. Many people never have or never will see sights like this other than a picture on an office wall or on the computer so we are truly blessed by seeing God’s handiwork every day of our lives. It is a great reminder that He is in control.