The one weekend that we have planned the entire summer
around arrived. We called it the “wedding weekend” whenever we spoke to our
friends. We would say “nope, we can’t do the river then, that’s the wedding
weekend, Jess and Matt are getting married and we’ll be on the Selway.”
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| A falls across the Selway River. |
At 6:00 AM the Wednesday of “wedding weekend” we drove down I-95
through Moscow, past stinky hot Lewiston, up the Clearwater River to Lowell,
Idaho. July 24th, was not only three days prior to the wedding, it
more importantly was Linda’s birthday. We had two camp goals when we left on our trip,
one was to camp on the Selway, accomplishing Linda’s annual requirement of
being on a river for her birthday. The
other was to see Selway Falls during our adventure. Just past Lowell we turned right and crossed
the river on a bridge that spans the Lochsaw River. This bridge is located just
above where the Selway joins the Lochsaw on its journey to the sea. This area is called Three Rivers. The Lochsaw
and Selway come together and form the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River which
then flows down to Lewiston Idaho and on down to form the Columbia River.
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| Our camp sight for the three days. |
Slowly we made our way up the Selway River checking out
possible camp sites. Most sites on the
river are small and very close to the road. Close to the road means dust, but fortunately
there was very few vehicles traveling about.
We also noticed that a lot of the sites were trashed by the previous
users. Most all had large amounts of garbage in the fire pits or around the
picnic tables. It is a shame that people
don’t respect such a beautiful place.
We drove up to Selway Falls and checked it our briefly. The
river was flowing low which made the falls look a lot less intimidating then saw
on my past visits. We drove on and
checked out the camp sites at Selway Falls Campground, turned the truck around
and headed back down river. Our upriver
scout had provide us two choices for camping, 25 Mile Camp and Boyd Camp. We chose Boyd campsite #1 because of the
access road into the site. It was farther
away from the river, but the site had shade most all day and was far enough off
the road to let the dust dissipate before it hit us. The site has a concrete
slab that overlooks the river. It was level and easy to set up on.
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| It was hot, just ask Kobi. |
Once we were set up and ready for our stay we went down to
the river and swam. There was a great
little beach that allowed us to enter the river via sand and there was a big
eddy which gave Kobi a great place to fetch sticks.
On Thursday we ate breakfast and went for a bike ride up
river. Kobi ran along beside us and we
let him go down to the river to lie in the cool water whenever he wanted. He
was not allowed to go into any culverts along the way. This was a big point of
contention between the humans and the dog.
The humans won, sort of.
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| Big guy, big bike. |
When we returned Linda took the dog and went down to the
swimming beach. I joined her later and
brought my fishing rod. I goofed around
fishing up river using several different flies.
I caught a couple whitefish but the nice cutthroat evaded me. I returned to where Linda and Kobi were
sunning and made one final change of flies.
I put on a grasshopper pattern with a San Juan worm dropper. I tossed this combination into the area where
the stream that entered the river merged and boom I had a cutthroat on the
worm. It was nice sized but nothing to write home about, I released it and
walked over near Linda.
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