Boat polygamist

It has been said that there are two things a man can love, a woman and a boat. (I have a boat,. well a couple of boats. I guess I'm a boat polygamist.) When I go to the lake I spend a lot of time on boats, looking at boats, reading about boats, and thinking about getting more boats.

Saturday morning I decided to drive over to Swan Lake to the east of Flathead Lake to go to a huckleberry festival that they have every year to see if I could buy some huckleberries. Usually I just pick my own huckleberries but it is dry out right now and the berries are said to be above 6000 feet and hard to come by plus there are all of these forest fires in the woods.

Anyway I put the bike on top of the car and headed out around the north end of Flathead Lake and into the Swan Valley where Swan Lake is. It's really cool back in there with big alpine mountains lush forest. It's where they have the Tour of the Swan River Valley, bike tour, TOSRV west, which I've ridden 4 times. I figured I'd check out the huckleberry festival buy some berries and then go for a bike ride along the shore of Swan Lake. Huckleberries sell for between $18 and $35 a gallon depending on the year. You would think there would be people selling huckleberries at a huckleberry festival but no... They had soap, ice cream, pies, Tshirts, walking sticks, everything but berries. So I went for my bike ride.

I went past this shop that had very nice cedar strip canoes. Well I remembered that Mr. C. has a cedar strip canoe made somewhere over in this area and I learned to sail in it when I was a teen. So I decided to go in and check things out. The door was open with a sign that said "come on in". As I went in I could hear the scrape scrape scrape of wood working and I could smell the cedar. I met Steve Morley who's dad, I found out, did build the canoe that I learned to sail in. (A sailing canoe) I think it might have made his day to hear my story, and it made my day to meet him and see the shop where the boat I learnd to sail in was born. The boats they make are to lust over. And what a great job this guy has in a beautiful location. You can read about Morley Canoes HERE They also make row boats like the one shown in the photo above that can be rigged to sail, and kayaks that can be used as rowing skulls.