Our Crew, Ft. Benton Start

Here's our crew, Jude, Brice, Cassie, Kelly & Roxanne

Kelly arrives in Billings, having driven from Denver he spends the night on the 16th and we do some packing and planning and get up early on the 17th. We pack up two vehicles and head to Ft. Benton (3 1/2 hour drive) where we spend the night in an AirbnB. We visit our canoe provider and get briefed as well as get our paddles and seat backs. The canoes will be delivered to our put-in spot in Ft. Benton near the city's round-about.. We take one car to the takeout at Judith Landing so we'll be able to shuttle ourselves back to Ft. Benton where we leave the pickup.

We pack the canoes with two coolers, one for food (mostly cooked ahead and frozen) topped with dry good on top, the other cooler has ice and cold drinks. We put all our kitchen supplies in a dry box and the rest of our gear goes into dry bags. Not knowing how much these two canoes can hold all we can do is get a big eye ball assessment of what fits into the back of Kelly's pickup truck aught to fit into two 17' long, three seat canoes. We run about town getting some last minute items like recommended fishing tackle and two wrapped firewood bundles. We all climb into the canoes never having paddled them before, but each having a bit of kayak paddling and we adapt as quickly as possible.

Now we're ready for 88 miles down the river. We'll go an average of 20 miles each day for the first three, then finish up the rest by splitting the miles between the last two days. We can dump our trash and resupply water on the second night. We've picked campsites that have vault toilets and fire rings as those are our bare minimum requirements.Read more