I know several people that have been on their trips and had only positives to say about the experience. Where will your float start? Have you floated any rivers of size before? That is one wild river, to be your first. If the weather stays mild , the spring runoff could be early and make it even more difficult? Glen Canyon is not far and we were caught in a terrible snow storm in late April one year. It started raining and before we got 20 miles away, it had turned to snow and we "pushed" snow with our rv. I am not trying to be negative, but it is a trip you have to be ready for anything. I always wanted to try the Colorado, but never was able to make it happen. I am still up for smaller floats, like in Wyoming on the Snake River or some sections of the Salmon, but not the sections dubbed the River of No Return! Enjoy and take lots of pictures to share.

I remember learning about L & C in High School but it sure is different and wonderful seeing it all in person. Quite the eye opener when you think of what they accomplished and the hardships they endured. I couldn't agree more, Nita. In fact many versions of your statement were oft repeated on our journey. We visited the places you mentioned. Marie, we did go to Washburn & visited the Interpretive Center & it was great! We stayed in Bismark & saw Sacagawea's Monument & the ND Heritage Center, Fort Lincoln, Custer House, and On-A-Slant Village (Indian), Fort Mandan, Knife River Indian Village Nat. Historic Site. Stopped @ the Painted Canyon Scenic Overlook & there were a herd of buffalo with babies grazing freely. The historian, Tom, said it was the 1st time in 12 years he has seen buffalo there. We also stayed in Medora, ND @ the beautiful Rough Rider Hotel & enjoyed walking/shopping in the lovely village. Cathy, yes we went over Bozeman Pass! Iirc both Sacagawea & Sitting Bull's final resting places are not known for certain or under dispute. Sacagawea has the most monuments of any woman, probably deservedly so... she was an amazing very young lady. I thought of you when we passed thru Idaho on Route 12.... OMG what an absolutely beautiful drive following the Lochsa/Clearwater Rivers. Do you live any where near that "Wild & Scenic River Corridor"? Richie "Wm.Clark" Doyle stepped on the bus @ Traveler's Rest & rode/spoke a time. Moni, it was a great trip... I hope you'll look into it. There were several singles in the group. 2 ladies shared accommodations & were paired up by the Road Scholar organization, thus saving $ for each. And you too Carol.... anyone who has a yen for history in general or L&C in particular. DH especially enjoyed "the ride", not having to drive our rig, & getting to gawk around at the fabulous scenery.

Thomas Dewar Quotes Scottish - Businessman January 6, 1864 - April 11, 1930 Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open. Thomas Dewar No wife can endure a gambling husband; unless he is a steady winner. Thomas Dewar There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead. Thomas Dewar The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax. Thomas Dewar Judge not a man by his clothes, but by his wife's clothes. Thomas Dewar The road to success is filled with women pushing their husbands along. Thomas Dewar Carl Sandburg Quotes American - Poet January 6, 1878 - July 22, 1967 I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor. Carl Sandburg The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to. Carl Sandburg A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Carl Sandburg Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. Carl Sandburg To be a good loser is to learn how to win. Carl Sandburg Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. Carl Sandburg There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud. Carl Sandburg Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny. Carl Sandburg Nothing happens unless first we dream. Carl Sandburg Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. Carl Sandburg I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future. Carl Sandburg I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way. Carl Sandburg Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. Carl Sandburg A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected. Carl Sandburg In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. Carl Sandburg Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life. Carl Sandburg The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. Carl Sandburg Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering. Carl Sandburg Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder. Carl Sandburg Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes. Carl Sandburg Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. Carl Sandburg I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct. Carl Sandburg All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected. Carl Sandburg I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends. Carl Sandburg Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me. Carl Sandburg The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect. Carl Sandburg Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work. Carl Sandburg Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence. Carl Sandburg I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty. Carl Sandburg Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by. Carl Sandburg The greatest cunning is to have none at all. Carl Sandburg I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world. Carl Sandburg Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment. Carl Sandburg One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude. Carl Sandburg I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it. Carl Sandburg I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. Carl Sandburg Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. Carl Sandburg Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time. Carl Sandburg A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake. Carl Sandburg Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years. Carl Sandburg Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her. Carl Sandburg Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool. Carl Sandburg The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help. Carl Sandburg We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough. Carl Sandburg When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on. Carl Sandburg Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child. Carl Sandburg To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard. Carl Sandburg Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed. Carl Sandburg All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure. Carl Sandburg A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man. Carl Sandburg I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth. Carl Sandburg I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago. Carl Sandburg I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman. Carl Sandburg I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out. Carl Sandburg I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter. Carl Sandburg I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this. Carl Sandburg I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way. Carl Sandburg I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building. Carl Sandburg I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read. Carl Sandburg I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen. Carl Sandburg I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural. Carl Sandburg I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie. Carl Sandburg I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors. Carl Sandburg I'm either going to be a writer or a bum. Carl Sandburg My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall. Carl Sandburg There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them. Carl Sandburg There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds. Carl Sandburg There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it. Carl Sandburg We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written. Carl Sandburg We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born. Carl Sandburg You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget. Carl Sandburg Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. Carl Sandburg Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are. Carl Sandburg When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along. Carl Sandburg

Hi, no one here knows me, but I wandered in here and found this thread that reminded me of my own Dad, who, when ten years younger than yours, took off in a van with minimal camping gear and spent just short of a year traveling, hiking, camping, gold-panning. He was surely depressed and angry when he started out. He handled his depression by doing a lot of lashing out at people, being very defensive, critical, and being an obnoxious know-it-all. I was a teenager at the time he took off, so I was glad he left and I did not hear from him in all that time. Now from an outsider's point of view there were other normal things he should have been doing during those months-- such as getting a job to support his still young kids. But, again, I was glad to be rid of him. And he came back a much more relaxed person, with lots of stories of places, people, animals, close calls with rocky cliffs and gravity; hot burritos bought from a tiny store in the middle of no-where on a rutted dirt road, climbing out of narrow river canyons when sudden storms threatened to flash flood; many pans of popcorn shared with others at park campgrounds, his cleverness at figuring out how to bake a chocolate cake over a fire to share with the popcorn eaters. And yes, he even got lost in a desolate place a time or two. He had a zillion stories to tell for the rest of his life. He spent months in nature and did not have to live up to anyone's standards, didn't have to prove himself better than others (which he was always trying to do previously), didn't have to do anything but let the sun shine down, wash his laundry occasionally, and see what was out there, how the clouds looked, where the fish would bite. I don't know what to say about how he faced or dealt with his failures that were part of how depressed he had been. He never did talk about that, but he was easier to live with afterward. I can see that his trip into another world was soothing, healing, "smoothing" for him. I won't say his solitary travels made him into a new person, but he was much more relaxed for ever after. Oh, he also got more physically healthy-- lost weight, gained muscle, built stamina, even ate healthier. He became a person who could almost always find something to enjoy. Thank goodness. Maybe it was his walkabout.