Montana Bound

  Our stay in Colorado has been enjoyable and comfortable, thanks to our friendly hosts Lauren and Matt.  My birthday was yesterday, May 31, and Lauren couldn't hold herself back from making a delicious strawberry rhubarb pie.  T'was the best pie I've ever had. Thanks again Lauren!  We had to continue our mission to Montana and Colorado was becoming very old very fast.
  We weren't sure if we were going to be able to drive I-90 all the way to, Bozeman, MT, our next stop on our journey back to Spotted Bear Ranch.  The town of Hardin, MT and the interstate running through was under a severe flood warning thanks to the Bighorn and the Little Bighorn Rivers flooding last week.  Luckily the interstate had become navigable  and we had a straight shot through Wyoming and into Montana via I-90.  Saw plenty of antelope, a few bucks.  It was perfect driving weather.  Every river or creek we traveled over was chocolate.  I-25 heads along Longmont up into Cheyenne, Wyo. and runs into I-90 just south of Sheridan.  We made it into Montana in 6 hours.

  After leaving Longmont at 7 am,  9 hours on the road and 3 stops later we made it to Bozeman.  Such a comfortable college town.  Surrounded by the Bridger mountains, the Gallatin and the Madison ranges, the Horseshoe Hills, and the Tobacco Root mountains.  The Gallatin and East Gallatin rivers, less than an hour from the mighty Missouri and its other two tributaries the Madison and Jefferson rivers, and only twenty minutes from the longest free flowing, undammed river in the lower 48 states; the Yellowstone.
  We met up with our buddy and past co-workers at Spotted Bear, Nick Larson, his fiance Jocelin, and their black lab Willard.  It was a long day of driving so after catching up and chowing down on some gargantuan elk burgers we hit the fart sack.

  The next day was our other co-worker, Morgan Cannons birthday.  We wanted to celebrate and  decided to try the Dirty Babcock Triangle (DBT) by hitting three bars on Babcock St. that are located within 150 feet of one another.  To make a very long story short, we only made it to one bar and had a blast.  I think we may have partied to hardy but you only turn 34 once, right Digger!?  
    
   Damn it feels good to be back in Montana. Even though were still 8 hours from where our journey finally ends it feels like we made it.

Rocky Mountain National Park

  Since we are crashing at Ian's buddy's, only an hour from RMNP, we figured it was a must to go visit and maybe fish the National Park, since we are a little addicted to fishing.  On Sunday we drove straight west from Longmont into the Wild Basin entrance to the park.  The North Fork of the St. Vrain creek creates this rugged basin.  We were told that we may be able to catch a brook trout in this water.  After buying our parks pass we didn't have to drive very far to access the St. Vrain.  The weather was very sunny and the creek was running clear.  The North Fork is a smaller creek.  We were fishing it during run off and it was still pretty small.  It looked very fishy too. Yet we fished it hard and Ian was lucky enough to pull out what we came for, a nice 11 inch brookie using a deep nymph rig and an indicator.  The scenery won us over, the fishing was a little dissapointing, but all in all twas a nice day in the park.
  Two days later we returned to RMNP to fish a different stretch of water.  We had learned that the Roaring River which is a tributary to the Fall River which flows into the Big Thompson.  To get to the Roaring River we had to drive through Estes Park and through the Falls River Park entrance.  Just out of Estes Park was a six point bull elk munching on aspen leaves along the road.  Cars and people were clustered around this almost unnatural sight.  I was kind of hoping the elk was going to get ticked off enough to put his velvet tipped antlers through those ignorant tourists who, I felt, were invading his space.  The elk here are celebrities.  The heard that lives in and around Estes are not wild in my opinion.
  After seeing a herd of cow elk in a meadow along the Falls River we turned into the Roaring River trail head parking area.  Snow started to fall when we stepped out of the car and loaded our packs with our fishing gear.  Not sure on how large the river was going to be we packed our waders and wading boots just in case.  This trail leads to Lawn Lake, 6.4 miles up the Roaring River.  We new we were going to encounter snow but weren't sure how high up.  The weather was bizarre.  Snow coming from the south yet there was nothing but blue sky as far as we could see.
  The hike started out switchbacking 1000 feet up in elevation and around 11,400 ft. Bighorn Mountain.  We were at 466 feet above see level in St. Louis only 4 days before.  This hike was hurting, bad.  It felt like the air was trying to push my head in and squirt my brains out of my ears.  Needless to say we took a few breaks going up this steeper section of the trail.
  After switchbacking up the hill, the trail leads to an overlook which stares down and into the Roaring River basin.  Still sunny and snowing.  The trail follows along the river with plenty of easy access points to get to the water.  The stream was a lot smaller than we thought. Didn't need our waders.  Though small, the water was flowing briskly.  It was very difficult to get a drift.  Ian saw a trout come up for his parachute Adams but couldn't hook 'em.  That was the only fish we saw up there.  We explored up the trail as far as we could but got snowed out after only two miles from the car.  Where there was snow there was over 2 feet.  We turned around and made our way back to the Jeep.  The mysterious clouds that were throwing snow at us had moved in and the weather was turning sour anyways.  We aborted RMNP.


  Drinking beer and fishing, again, for carp was all we needed to bring our spirits up from this dismal day in the park.