5 years and running!!

On Sept 6th, Sharee and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary! It was her year to plan the fiesta and she did a fantastic job. We have not had so much fun in a very long time! Sharee woke me up early at our house and told me to get in the car. She got on I-90 and headed east...we kept driving and driving and I did not have a clue what we were going to do.....

First stop was the Hiawatha Trail. A 14.5 mile mountain bike ride through an old and historic train route. Taken from the program...."The 15 mile trail winds through 10 tunnels and over 7 trestles in the rugged bitterroot mountains on the Idaho/Montana border. The route is best known for the long, dark St. Paul or “Taft Tunnel” that burrows for 1.8 miles under the state line. The best part is – it’s all downhill at a mild 2% grade and provides a shuttle service back to the top. When finished, the Route of the Hiawatha trail will extend approximately 46 miles and allow a bicyclist or hiker to ride or walk the Route between St. Regis, Montana and Pearson, Idaho."

Here's some more photos....

After the ride, Sharee took me even further east in Montana on I-90...about 30 miles later, she turns north! I don't know where the heck I'm going. About 20 minutes or so on that road, she pulls over to this place...

It's in Paradise, MT! How did she find this place! It was super cool, the food was fantastic, the mineral pools were awesome. See the picture here...

You can see that these pools are separated...they are all at different temperatures and are filled with natural spring water and minerals. It was very unique and tons of fun. We stayed the night in our comfy cabin and Sharee woke me up early again! We ate a fantastic breakfast at the lodge...Sharee went to get direction to our next stop from our waitress. She was very clear not to tell me anything or say anything...sure enough the old lady came back to our table and says, "I'm so jealous that you guys are going white-water rafting..." I got super excited and Sharee was giving the "evil eye" to the waitress...she wanted to kill her for ruining the next surprise. It was still awesome to me and just as much of a surprise.

So we go on the road again and end up here....

(hope you like my wetsuit!)

Our guides name was Kristin and she was awesome! She has been all over the world and is a "master guide" or something like that....she was so cool she actually started a story saying..."When I was living in an orphanage in Cambodia..." How many people, especially 22 years old, can start a story saying that?!! We loved her!

When we showed up it started to rain and we put on all of the warm items that we could...the water temp. was only a bit over 50 degrees. The coolest part is that we were the only ones on the trip! You'll often go to these types of things and you'll have other parties in the raft. We were lucky. After a quick safety lesson, Kristin had us on the Clark-Fork going over class III rapids! I almost fell out of the raft a couple of times and the girls were laughing at me. 1/2 way through the "float" we ate lunch prepared by Kristin. It was really good!

The whitewater rafting was the coolest part of the whole trip and I'm so grateful I have a wife who thinks "outside the box" when planning our anniversary adventures! Anyone who is thinking of doing this, use PANGEA EXPEDITIONS http://www.leaveboringbehind.com/ and ask for Kristin :)

Here's us loading the raft back up...I wish we had some action photos, but I promise you there was some killer rapids!