I think I have a few pictures that might help our Toyota dealer sell a few Priuses.
See, we decided to go down to our friend Doug’s place in order to join the social circle for the traditional mid-summer float. It used to be a Solstice float, but this year it was a Father’s Day float. We went a little more than 6 miles on the beautiful Gasconade River, from the Kincheloe Drive ford to the Forest Service Mayfair access off Highway Z.
The river was full of water, flowing nicely. The weather was perfect, a blue sky and no wind. There are some long deep holes that you have to pull through, so this float is a lot more work than we are used to on the upper Niangua. Didn’t matter, though. We had an outstanding day. There was only one blockage on the whole stretch, all it involved was lifting canoes over a log that was across the channel. No big deal. Sorry, no pictures from the river. I just didn’t feel like having to be paranoid about the camera and water. As it turned out, it would not have been a problem, but you just never know.
Dinner was under the stars back at Doug’s place. Don and Caroline brought fresh Yukon gold potatoes and Vidalia onions from their (of course) organic garden and roasted them over the fire. If you have never had a garden fresh potato, you probably think the potato is a fairly pedestrian vegetable. Add to that various marinated and grilled steaks, and that was our dinner. Well, and beer. And wine.
After dinner, Don got out his guitar and treated us to an impromptu open-air acoustic concert. It wasn’t all solo stuff, he had plenty of repertoire that we could all sing along to. Jim and I got tired, and headed to the tent. After a while we could hear the guitar get passed along to Jay for a while. What a treat, those two guys can really sing and play.
Our sleep was punctuated by the calls of two kinds of tree frogs surrounding us and a couple of green frogs from the pond. Far away in the distance, down in the hollow, you could just hear the “Barump” call of a large bull frog. In the morning, we heard a couple of bands of coyotes bragging about the night’s hunt to each other from opposite sides of the ridge. Breakfast was blueberry pancakes and coffee.
The Prius performed in an outstanding way. This is how it looked when packed up for the trip down:
Granted, there wasn’t room for any passengers in the back seat, but we didn’t have any passengers. This is what the pile looked like when it was unpacked:
And this is what our site looked like when unpacked and set up. Just a little home away from home, and all from that little car! Now, don’t be silly. Of course that propane tank was not in the car with us! That is Doug’s household fuel supply.
You can get a lot more stuff in that Prius than it looks like is possible when you stand outside the car and look at it. And we still got 52.6 mpg on our way down there.
What are you waiting for? Well, other than money and needing a new vehicle.
