Flathead Lake Lodge

This story is about a very unusual situation when a spacecraft of enormous size was spotted on Flathead Lake!

Many times, after dinner at Flathead Lake Lodge, the guests enjoy an evening sunset cruise to experience the Montana solitude and beauty of the lake and mountains as the sun sets behind the mountain on the west shore. This particular evening, I, Doug, was captain of the Stancraft cruiser with about 25 guests on board, cameras in hand, ready to capture the sunset and bald eagles nesting as we cruise up from the mouth of the Flathead River. This adventure took place in the 1980’s when there was plenty of talk about aliens, UFOs, and Area 51 sightings. As of this writing, the US Department of Defense has recently re-opened the files on UFOs.

As the cruiser headed west toward the mouth of the river, there were old white dead tree snags and submerged stumps that lined the river mouth. It was a dangerous area to navigate with the channel unknown except to locals and certainly not considered a safe boating area. Over the years more than a mile of the mouth has washed away. Today the river channel is marked and has excessive boat travel.

As the cruiser approached the mouth of the river, I noticed something unusual from about one mile away that looked exceptionally large and in a shape that is best described as a disk-like spaceship. As we came within about a half mile, I stopped the boat for all to get a closer look.     I have to say if there was ever a moment that I thought I was seeing a spaceship perched on long extension legs, bug eyed bubbles, antennas, and sealed doors, this was it. All onboard were taking pictures and felt the same. I knew of nothing this large, the size of a semi-truck, that could boat or drive to where it had landed in the stumps and dead tree snags. We collected ourselves and the most interesting thing at that moment was the different reactions from the guest passengers. Several were near panic and wanted to retreat feeling there was high danger. Others thought the moment could be their claim to fame if they captured a real photo of a UFO. Another part of the group, me included, said let’s get closer and investigate what this thing is and if there are any aliens onboard.

A Closer Look

To the aghast of those that wanted to retreat we motored forward. Within about 100 yards I stopped again. Several had telephoto lenses on their cameras that showed the great detail in the spacecraft. It had numerous lights, but not lit up, hatches and antennas. The legs were ant-like and open brace framed and the color was camouflaged, of sorts. There appeared to be gun ports with barrels around the perimeter that were sealed with bubble liners. The size was estimated at 15’ in height and about 30’ circumference with the legs holding it about 10’ off the water. Again, I was dumbfounded knowing the only way for something this large to get there was to land from above.

The tension grew in the cruiser. One man from NY told me I was endangering his family. One lady was crying and in a fetal position. Being the adventuresome type, I couldn’t wait to get closer and had only a few people on the boat encouraging me to say that this was our moment to be famous for locating a real UFO. As we slowly approached, within 50 yards, the guns swiveled around towards us. I spun the cruiser around and retreated at a rapid pace. As we retreated to about 300 yards, the guns withdrew in the other direction. I took that as they no longer felt threated. In that tense moment, a flag of sorts popped up and the hatch opened. We could make out what we thought was an alien figure, silhouetted by the evening sun setting directly in line with us and the spaceship. We observed the figure waving and thought this was too good to be true, we are going to meet a friendly alien. I turned the boat around and slowly headed for the spaceship. Again, the weak of heart were feeling a little less endangered but still wanting to get the hell out of there. As we kept approaching the waving was more intense. Glaring towards the sun, it appeared the figure to be the size of a large man. We kept creeping forward, the lake was dead calm, not another boat on the lake.

As the cruiser came within about 100’ of the craft, we moved very slowly as we were starting to get into the submerged stumps and dead trees. It was then that our UFO story was deflated, as the figure waving at us could clearly be seen as having a Flathead County Sherrif uniform and he was waving us closer. Unfortunately, everyone was out of film at this point as they had been taking pictures for 30 minutes. In the 1980’s you had to load a roll of film in the camera, and nobody brought enough backup rolls.

A Talk with the Deputy

As we came within a few feet of the spacecraft which looked about real as anyone could imagine a spacecraft to look like, we began talking with the deputy. He explained that a major Hollywood production company was shooting a scene for a space movie early in the morning and hoping to get film of the spaceship at the mouth of the river with the 30-mile-long lake in the background surrounded by mountains. The ship was actually a large inflatable mockup of a spaceship with amazing detail for the movie set. They had just blown it up prior to our cruise, hoping nobody would see it before morning and mess up the scene with boats in the background. The deputy guarded it for the night. We had a big laugh when he turned the guns toward us.

It was a great moment in studying the social behavior of a group of people in what they perceived as a dangerous situation and how some were early to run, and others were looking for more adventure, solve the mystery, and face the danger straight on. In 45 years of operating a dude ranch and many stressful situations with bears, lake storms, lost hikers, capsized river rafts, criminals, forest fires, and horse mishaps, it is clear that our society is made up of A-B-C personalities at all ages. Some citizens are very capable in tense moments and others require to be taken care of. Hopefully, we can raise a future generation like the brave folks of the greatest generation of WWII That can take care of themselves and our county.

15 years later…

Almost 15 years later my Cowboy Hall of Fame brother, Darv, was doing western commercials and filming in Hollywood. I stopped to visit him, and we were invited to tour Warner Bros. with our longtime Lodge guest and WB executive Ed Thrasher and wife Linda Gray, JR’s wife in the Dallas series. As we drove around WB and the many sets, we came upon a large storage area. To my amazement I spotted the blow-up spaceship partially inflated sitting on the lot waiting for another movie. We stopped to look at the spacecraft, and it was fun telling the story to Ed and Linda about the prior lake adventure.

That leads to another story, when years later with Ed and Linda on board we were crossing the lake on a dark night returning from cocktails and dinner at Lakeside, when we hit a submerged stump with the cruiser loaded with passengers. There’s more to that story, but all survived.