This 2004 Chris Craft is similar to the dozens Bill has restored

With three children, eight grandchildren and two great grands who all come here to play on the weekend, Bill and Mary's docks are filled with floating toys.

 Mixing business with pleasure definitely has paid off so far. Though it is possible to drive across the USA in five or six days to reach the boatshows and book stores in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maryland, where we were invited to present seminars, we decided to take life easy and allowed ourselves a month. For once we decided, we would actually see some of the beautiful sights we'd missed during all those years of exploring other countries under sail or by motor cycle or 4 X4.  Just as important, we wanted to catch up with a few friends from earlier times in our lives, even if it meant driving extra distances. Eight days into our trip, we are feeling we made a very wise choice.

                Bill and Mary Eisenlohr, with their two sons Scott and John and daughter Laura, were very much part of our Bull Canyon days. They lived in Corona where Bill finished off bare fiberglass hulls. They were right on the way home when we went into the city, a sort of stopping off place on the way back to the canyon. We often shared meals, helped each other when big timbers had to be milled. We lost touch soon after we sailed away. Then just as I was finishing Bull Canyon, I received an email from Mary – "just found your website – come and see us next time you are in the USA." So we did, driving almost due north from Yosemite across the stunning but desolate deserts of Nevada through the beautiful, almost unpopulated, canyon of the Little Salmon River and up to their home on the Northwest edge of Flat Head Lake. 

                The reunion was warm – the Eisenlohrs a supreme example of a successful family. When Bill was able to leave the crowds, traffic and smog of Riverside, he found his own special paradise.  Then all three of his children married and with their new families, eventually all moved north too, and set up their own small businesses within a few miles of each other. Everyone, grandchildren, children and what felt like a dozen dogs arrived on Sunday morning to sail, swim or motor out from their folks home.  They all remembered our country boatyard, our visits when we helped Bill raise the sides of the barn that eventually housed the classic cars he restored when boatbuilding slacked off. Best of all, we learned every Sunday is the same at Bill and Mary's home, an event that is far too rare in today's world, a family gathering by choice, not by obligation.