The old roof served this house well for 27 years — through snow, ice, hail, and high winds. But, the intense sun has finally taken its toll. It is time for the old to retire and to make room for the fresh new asphalt upstarts.
Rocket Boys
This new uncle/nephew launch team (my son and grandson) — following Elon Musk’s lead — have vowed to make billions in the rocket business so that they can purchase social media platforms and to turn them into true free speech platforms.
What better way to celebrate the American Dream and the 4th of July!
Se¿liš Ksanka Qlispe¿ (or the dam formerly known as Kerr)
The dam formerly known as Kerr Dam is running nearly full throttle — quite a sight! My visiting son and family joined us for the 700 steps down to an observation overlook.
This is the outlet for Flathead Lake, which receives its water from Glacier National Park and beyond.
When the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes took over operations in recent years, they renamed the dam Se¿liš Ksanka Qlispe¿. That’s a bit tougher than “Kerr.” No disrespect intended, but I now may have to refer to it as SKQ Dam.
E-Boat 2.0
We “pushed the envelope” with our new e-boat technology and traveled to and from Flathead Lake’s beautiful Wild Horse Island with battery power (aka unicorn power) alone. No speed barriers were broken. In fact, we went sloooow enough to smell the wild roses.
Don’t tell anyone, but we traveled for 2 hours without seeing a single boat (and we can see at least six miles on this vast body of freshwater). And this, on a Saturday in mid-June with ideal, calm, relatively warm conditions.
Green Electric Boat (sort of)
Can an electric 12-volt 1-hp trolling motor with a 100ah battery push our 4,500-lb. boat to that distant island (2-miles) and back? That was the bet. And we won. In fact, it pushed us along at 1.5-knots (nice trolling speed) for 5-miles, and it still had juice remaining.
We never fired up our very thirsty 4-barrel 250-hp Mercruiser. First time. And we feel virtuously green because, as everyone knows, electricity comes from the pixie dust raised by the stomping golden hooves of dancing rainbow colored unicorns.
Okay, we used a lithium battery. But still, that’s a lot of barge to push through the water.
We would now call it an e-boat, if WWII history had not already taken that name.
Failure To Launch
I’ve been waiting for 8 months. I knew from past experience that I could launch the boat when the level of Flathead Lake achieved 3′ below summer’s full pool.
Wrong!
Either I miscalculated or winter storms have pushed the shoreline rocks higher. I think the latter. Anyway, not enough water for launch. All I accomplished was a broken trailer taillight and an unintended swim in very cold water (while searching for the taillight pieces). We did salvage the outing, however, with picnic at a nearby park.
Falling in the freezing water of Flathead Lake was the second shock of the day. The first was filling the 60-gallon boat tank with premium gas at the new, post-Covid prices! We may be outfitting the boat with long paddles.
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