Ruby River Camping

This past Friday we packed up, left civilization and cell service behind and headed out past Alder, MT to get our camp on. We spent the first night in the Vigilante forest service cabin with my best friend Jen, her husband Ben, their two kids Noah and Alex ages 6 and 2 and their two Norwegian Elkhounds. You know its remote when you log an additional  40 miles on dirt roads to get in and out. The cabin is located in the heart of grizzly country but luckily we were bear incident free although a big black bear did meander down towards the cabin to get a better whiff of some of Ben's caramelized onions for our Friday night dinner.

Dispersed camping along the Ruby river / reservoir system

Saturday morning we parted ways and off we went, 3 rolling stones with no plans in place but all the time in the world. We scoped out a sweet dispersed camping spot on the Ruby Reservoir on a rather large and private peninsula. Dispersed camping is primitive camping that is located within the National Forest Service area but it is outside of a designated campground. There are dispersed campgrounds all over Montana. These spots have very few services such as bathrooms, trash removal and occasionally no fire ring. You can roll up first come first serve and your welcome to stay there anywhere from 14 to 16 days. Our spot was epic for a couple of reasons the first being it was isolated. No one was near us for miles and the most recent visitors to our camp had been some moose who left us sizable tracks imprinted in the sand as well as piles of fresh poop. Sage was of course grateful for the morsels of moosie meadow muffins. In addition we had our own private beach directly to the right of our tent. 

We may be in Montana but thats Taylor pork Roll were making for breakfast. #jersey #philly

Lake stick fun

We spent the rest of our weekend eating and drinking entirely too much and fishing as much as we could handle. Sage spent the same moments marauding around finding mule deer legs to chew on, foraging for moose poop, and trying to ruin every second of our fishing that she could. If I ever had any doubt in my mind its now been clarified and 110% certified, Sage is the worst fishing dog period. She doesn't discriminate….you could be fly fishing, lure fishing or using fresh bait but she will intervene and she will wreck your good time while maintaining an insane level of cuteness. This is how she operates:

She zones in on your lure

Then she swims out scaring away any and all fish all while trying to bite your line 

Then she makes tough choices. It's either enthusiastically wrapping herself in your lines or getting dry flies stuck in her fur. Regardless the end result is always the same….. 

She finds herself excitedly tied to a tree extremely annoyed barking obscenities as loud as she can. Life is so tough when all you want is fishies. 

Despite her attempts at destroying our good fishing times we prevailed. We all made it home with a moderate level of camping hangover. I can't wait until we have another little pup to share all of this with. From this weekend on we will spend a good portion of our time next to some river getting our Montana on.  I can't wait. Be sure to check back and follow our shenanigans on Facebook at: Adventures of a German Shorthaired Pointer.