Boating

Well, these pictures are not from my camera, but they are from the Gates to the Mountains. The first is of the tour boat in the Gates, the second is the sleeping giant (can be seen from the city) a famous mountain feature that backs up to the Missouri river just north of the final picture. The final picture is of the entrance to the Gates. Lewis and Clark, two famous American explorers, found this gate to the Rocky Mountains in 1803. They came up the Missouri river looking for a water passage to the Pacific ocean. The river was smaller then, now it has a dam which makes it wider for boat passage and gives us all the electricity for the city.

Lewis and Clark were led by a Shoshoni girl Sacagawea (a Sioux captive) into the west and came upon this site near dusk. Exhausted from paddling upriver, and in the near dark, they thought they had come to the end of the river as it appeared a rock wall (on the left) blocked any further passage. As they pushed forward around the bend, however, the wall seemed to open revealing a passageway into the Rockies, hence the name, Gates to the Mountains.

My parents have a small boat out there at the marina and my friends and I headed out there yesterday afternoon. We skied, tubed, swam, and knee boarded. The water takes your breath away (literally, IT'S COLD), and the sun burns fairly quickly since we're pretty high up but that's all part of the fun! I haven't been in awhile, 5 years, and the boat doesn't speed up very quickly since it's old and we had 6 adults on board, so my arms are dead. Took four tries to get up on the ski (I wanted to see if I could still slalom), three head first plants into the water, and a fourth loonnggg struggle until the boat finally got up to speed and I could stand up straight without the lake launching itself into any open facial orifice! But I got up, and now I'm paying for it. Oh, well, was a great Sunday afternoon...think we're all going to heal up this week and head out again this weekend!