As a mere lad back in the day when economies were small, recessions were big and long lasting, and there was no internet, my Dad took on a job as the manager of a remote gold mine in Alaska. One of the conditions of his employment was bringing me, the mere lad referred to above, along to be the camp gofer, aka lowest worker bee on the totem pole, as opposed to the more glorious and better paid gophers, who exceed at digging holes and watching for hawks.
Anyway, I went along and did the gofer thing. I guess I have to say it changed my life. Pretty much every day, as a cocky young punk going into my senior year of high school I got to see this every time I looked down the valley
Work was a 24/7 affair, which fit in with the daylight we had for most of the summer. Work looked like this:
This is a grizzly, the top part, which acts to "sort" the boulders off and shunt the to the side. Smaller "stuff" goes through where it is shaken and washed and further sorted. Large stuff going off to the left side, while the smallest fractions fall all the way through to the bottom and begin their trip down the sluice which comes out of the shot to the LR corner of the picture into a headbox and then into riffles lined with carpet. Every two weeks the top four feet of this riffle was covered with an inch+ thick layer of solid gold, ranging from dust up to nuggets the size of a thumb joint. To this day, I've never seen anything quite like it. Nor will anyone. This was by far the most destructive thing I have ever seen. At the time, even as a mere lad, I was surprised that pillaging and destruction of this extent and scale was legally allowed. It is somewhat ironic, that destruction on a much larger scale was visible in the valley head. What those three glaciers did was vastly more destructive, but that is natural and therefore OK. right?
At day's end we would vacate the machines for the next shift and proceed back to camp, which was this set of three Alaska pipeline surplus trailers. While the trailers were scrungy and not worth description, they all had million dollar views of three glaciers which within a few miles of camp, all came together and melted, creating the Middle Fork of the Chistochina River. A superb, once in a lifetime view, that I was too dumb to recognize as anything special. This was in 1983 and we were poor, so cameras and films were semi-precious. This picture is pretty much the only one.
When I fish from kayak, paddleboard or canoe, where to put the paddle is a constant issue. That was the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw an Angle Oar. Finally a place to "keep" the paddle where it doesn't fall in and float away. All I have to do is let go of it. The other thing I like about it is that I can easily paddle with one hand on either side of the boat. Usually what happens is that if I want to make an adjustment the paddle is always on my other side, so I have to put everything down to get the paddle. With an Angle Oar one half is always available on either side. Very cool. To me anyway. I think to many other paddling fishing types as well.
I love to see people that recognize an opportunity and fill the gap. Looks to me like Meg McCall and her Angle Oar device are on the way!!!!!
I think this is also a great idea. Not quite as gap filling as the Angle Oar, but I do think the Slatworx grill does put a fresh new twist on a piece of camping many people do not care for - the existing dirty grill at the established campsite - prior usage unknown. I know the possibility of what the prior camper did to the grill bothers my wife. It bothers me if I think about it too much. The slatworx grill offers an easy alternative. Easy to setup, take down, and package away. Good stuff.
the Kwik Trip, which you'll see as soon as you cross the bridge and arrive in Sauk City (coming from Madison). With the boats unloaded, then the shuttle, a necessary evil when doing rivers. My oldest daughter and I recrossed the bridge and boogied down Hwy. 78 to Arena, found the backroad to the Arena landing, parked the van and trailer and made it back to Sauk City in less than an hour, which was good because the natives were restless sitting there waiting for us to get back.
Middle kid took the paddleboard, big kid took the Native Watercraft boat, little one was with me in the canoe and my wife took the speed boat, a rec kayak (Cayuga from Old Town). She loves that boat and soon left us all in the dust. Four boats, five people and a dog. Water, sun, some food, and about twelve miles of downstream floating. Water level was at about 4900 cfs, pretty low, but this level also ensures lots of sandbars. I made the standup paddleboard and the paddle. Two of my favorite projects ever. All the boats are pure pleasure though and we switch off all day long.
Beautiful. The water is clear brown and moving along at ~3mph maybe? The wind kind of cancels out a chunk of that, but it still carries us along.
The day got a little long. I did not account for how easily an upstream wind can negate the current. A 12 mile float downstream, I thought would be largely done by the current. Instead it was a 50/50 thing with us paddling more than I had planned/hoped for.
