During the first years of our marriage, we lived in Idaho, about three hours from Yellowstone National Park. At that time the number of visitors decreased sharply when school began in September. Before we had children, we several times went camping in mid-September and had the park almost to ourselves. We either slept in a tent or rented a rustic cabin.
Several years later, when our two sons were still preschoolers, we bought a square-stern canoe and a tiny outboard motor for day trips on nearby lakes. We enjoyed these so much that we decided to use a full week of my limited vacation to camp in Yellowstone National Park beside 7,800-foot-elevation Shoshone Lake. Shoshone Lake, which did not allow boat motors, is connected to Lewis Lake, which did.
I planned to use our outboard motor to transport us in our heavily loaded canoe from Lewis Lake up the Lewis River channel as we could go without violating the strictly enforced prohibition of motors “in use or otherwise on” Shoshone Lake.
I used a chain and padlock to secure our outboard motor to a well-hidden tree near the end of the channel connecting the two lakes. Then we paddled about two miles to our camping spot. Everything seemed to be going according to plan for two beautiful days in mid-August.
But when we awoke on the morning of the third day, we found several inches of new snow and a strong, cold wind. The water in the lake consisted of rough whitecaps, with the storm threatening to get much worse.
We quickly shut down our camp and loaded everything into our canoe for what we hoped would be a safe trip back to the campground where we had left our car. I felt very vulnerable paddling through the rough water in a canoe, being fully aware of canoes’ well-deserved reputation for instability. Yet we had no choice and hoped for the best. Fortunately, our 4-year-old son didn’t recognize the danger, while our 2-year-old amazingly fell asleep in the bottom of the canoe.
When we finally reached where I had left the outboard motor, I was desperately hoping I could find it and it would start and run properly during the final three miles of the Lewis River channel between us and our car.
I’m glad to report that the motor did its job and we safely reached our car, where we loaded our wet camping gear into the trunk and strapped the canoe to our car-top carrier. We were wise to leave when we did because the temperature dropped below freezing that night at our home in Idaho Falls, which was 3,100 feet lower.
Although we had to cut short the camping week we had planned, we were grateful to have survived with an adventure story to share with friends and family.
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