Caleb is good at not sleeping.  Caleb is great at making sure others don’t sleep more than a few hours.  It felt like I’d slept for all of 21 minutes, but apparently it was long enough to miss the chance to take a ride in Joel’s light plane.  Luckily Hawk and Will didn’t make that mistake and flew right into the S.Teeth, pulling crazy manuevers like buzzing cars and skidding the plane’s tires on the river; Will even made his first solo landing!  We grubbed pizza and headed to the White Clouds Rafting Co. to float the day stretch of the Salmon River with the other bands that played the festival.  I wasn’t sure what to expect with that many musicians from all across the country at the same place and time without instruments in their hands, but was soon comforted when clothing was shed and crowd surfing ensued on the bus ride to the put-in.  On the water piracy ruled: attacks were carried out with stealth or intimidation to steal another boats beer or whiskey.  We stopped to jump off an old steel bridge momentarily before promptly resuming vicious rounds of paddle-splash fights.  Back in Stanley we devoured a mexican buffet that was provided for the spent paddlers, then we drove down to Grand Jean on the western slopes of the Sawtooths to stay and hotspring at our friend Melissa’s cabin.

by Jesse Shell

Tags: Grand Jean, Hotsprings, Salmon River

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Road Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.