Setting Up a Paddle On the Riddle Ranch

Monday September 25, 2023 Riddle Ranch Idaho

Yesterday

Yesterday, Sunday, I  had a couple of hours to drive to get to the Duck Valley Reservation.

I drove on by these cattle on this ranch in the background. Cattle laying down means they’ve  had plenty to eat and are chewing their cud.

 

Internet

I made it to the reservation and drove on over to the computer lab to use the internet,…………. But. Usually, I can just drive up there with no password and use the internet, but today, there was a password which I didn’t have and it was Sunday, so no one was around.

 

Two ladies

I saw these two ladies weeding the yard across the street about getting some internet access. They were very helpful giving me some ideas on where to  look, but most of the places needed a password, but they did send me to the Tribal Court place where I got on the internet without a password, so at least I can get on the internet now. Cell phone service here is not available. They all have land lines.

 

Reservation store

I’d tried to get internet here too, but it was all password protected and no one was giving out passwords.

This is where I get gas in this area and do some shopping as they have a fairly good store.

 

Riddle Ranch

That’s where I’m headed, about fifteen miles up the road. It’s a huge ranch and is all Open Range so one can go pretty much all over it without getting kicked off the place.

I drove on in and was just going to head out to a spot to find a place to camp when I saw this guy working on a fence.

That was fortunate as it turned out to be a guy I met here last year with his lady friend.

 

We shot the bull for a good hour and he told me a place to camp and where I could put in my kayak which was just up ahead on the road I was traveling.

Camp

I pulled into this spot near the creek and set up camp for the night.
The only problem I had was the darn flies wanted to get into my van to spend the night. They didn’t bite but were just pesky. I’ll have to put up my bug screens tomorrow.

 

Monday, the next day

The next morning, Monday, today, I checked out the creek for a place to put my boat in the water. The creek had high banks so that wasn’t going to be easy to get the boat in the water. I found this spot by the bridge but it was real muddy. I thought about cutting some grass to put on top of the mud which I eventually did.

 

Camp

I  moved the van to a new camp spot closer to the creek and near where I wanted to put the boat in the water.

 

Launch site

I worked on cutting some grass and fixing that muddy spot and unloading the boat and getting all the boat gear together. I got that all done around noon, but then the wind came up. Not really too bad and with the creeks six foot banks it shouldn’t be to bad.

 

But I decided to take a break and sat around the van enjoying the day until about three when I put the boat in the water with the wind about the same. My grass worked pretty good to stay out of the mud and I started heading down stream. The guy told me I should be able to go about ten miles before I had to turn around. That was further than I wanted to go.

 

Clams

I noticed there were a lot of these big fresh water clam shells along the way. They are pretty tasty and the Indians used to eat a lot of them in the old days.

 

From what I gather, they don’t eat them now as they no longer know about them.

I found walls of the shells around some old caves when I was exploring the Jarbidge Canyon a number of years ago.

The guy was wrong

He said I should be able to paddle about ten miles, but I only made it to just over a mile before the water got too shallow so I turned around and made my way back to the van.

 

I made it back to the van.

 

Even though it was a short paddle, it was still a nice one.

I spent the rest of the day getting the boat and paddling stuff put away and then had a nice nap.

Oh, I did get the bug screens up so no more pesky flies bothering me.

Sunset

Sunset was pretty nice too.

 

Nice day.