During the summer of 1980, it was extremely hot I was laid off from logging for the fire season. Some friends and I decided to canoe the Salmon River; it would take 4 to 5 days, and we thought it would be a fun trip. The fishing was phenomenal, and the weather was sunny. The water was low, making the rapids great, but on one set of rapids, one of the canoes sustained a pretty serious hole. We were kind of perplexed as to how we could repair the damage. I looked down and saw one of the ice cream buckets we use to carry our cameras in to keep them dry, and a thought hit me. I pulled one of the pump-up fuel tanks from a Coleman stove, pumped it up, turned the fuel on and lit the end of the tube on the tank like a blowtorch. Then I took the lid from one of the ice cream containers and melted it over the hole. Worked like a charm. This canoe was never properly fixed after that and never leaked again.
This trip was the first of many adventures on the Salmon River; most trips after this were done in January when the river was running high. My dog Cody was my constant canoe buddy. Canoeing the salmon became a yearly adventure.