16 June: Kalispell

Monday was a great day of puttering around town with Jeff, my CouchSurfing host in Kalispell. We drove into town so he could show me around a little bit and pick up a couple things I needed (like some spare tent stakes). We stopped by Rocky Mountain Outfitter, which had nearly the exact stakes that I wanted, and they were inexpensive so I picked them up. We went for coffee, and stopped at Gresko's, a sort of gourmet grocery store, for coffee and a look around. I found some 7-1/2 year aged gouda there for what I considered to be the very reasonable price of $19.99 per pound. I bought about 1/4 pound, knowing that a cheese aged that long would 1) be tasty and 2) hold up well in my food container. And let me tell you, that cheese is DELICIOUS and has lasted a week now. It may not last much longer though, because I'm itching to finish it off.

The real highlight of the day, however, was yet to come. Monday afternoon, we ventured over to Flathead Lake to put Jeff's sailboat in the water and go for an evening sail. There were some glitches and minor obstacles (like having the wrong size trailer hitch and then not being able to pull it off to put the right one on), but we overcame them and after about an hour of working on it, we had Jeff's boat in the water and tied up to the dock. While Jeff & I worked on that, his girlfriend Candace was busy with the barbeque, cooking up steaks (for them), and some portabello mushrooms, and red bell peppers that I had marinated. She also grilled some pineapple and asparagus. By the time Jeff and I had gotten the boat in the water and made some other preparations (like putting the tiller back together, getting the outboard running, and prepping the sails and the mooring lines) we were very hungry; fortunately, this coincided perfectly with the food being ready! The barbeque was awesome, and Candace had experimented with grilling the asparagus in several different ways. I couldn't decide which I liked best, it was all so good.

After dinner, we quickly packed our food up and headed out to the boat. We started the engine and got underway, motoring out until we had almost reached the wind, evident by its impression on the water. We put the sails up and waited. And waited and waited, having stopped a bit too soon. Eventually Jeff got impatient, motored us up to the wind, and we got going. I was thrilled to be out on the water again after so long, and very happy that it involved sailing. We tacked around the lake for a while, watching the sunset and the other two or three sailboats out there with us. The sunset was pretty, and the near-full moon hung in the sky gorgeously.


- Jeff -

- Candace -

- Derek -

When it was just starting to get dark, we motored in to the dock and packed up. We went home to Jeff's and enjoyed some brief conversation before going to bed, the efforts ofgetting the boat in the water having weighed heavily on all of us.