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River Days 10-11 14 October 2014


877 : 1085

The rest of the world becomes very much part of our consciousness as we approach the Confluence. You can feel the Colorado coming around the last couple of bends in the Green.

The Colorado River is a Big Deal in the Southwest, and I felt nervous about navigating on it -- turned out to be not much different, as Sienna reassured me. There was a nasty little bit of rapids just below the registration box and the sign that warns you not to go too far. Canyon Walls are as steep, but something is different here – colors not as vivid, distances farther. And of course, the looming awareness that the trip is behind us ...and there's a lot of work to be done to get ready for pick-up.


878 : 1079

879 : 1075

We gambled on the right place to camp at Spanish Bottom, and except for the absence of a good landing there – the bench where we camped was high above the river, making for a lot of schlepping – we were lucky. We started in right away on the preparations for pickup the next day at 11am ...or so we thought...

880 : 1073

881 : 1071

We were both up well before sunrise, racing to get camp broken, as much silt out of our sleeping bags and tents as humanly possible ...all while appreciating the most glorious sunrise we'd seen on the river. We had an actual omelette for breakfast, took time to enjoy our last tea and coffee on the river.

I even had time to take a picture of some bees fumbling a Datura.


882 : 1069

And we were almost ready when the boys showed up half an hour early in the jet boat. Despite nearly forgetting the Tex Box (the portable privy we'd been pooping in for ten days) – the boys reminded us – we made an orderly embarcation. Here's Sienna finding our bench with all our worldly goods deployed on the jetboat.

Suddenly, the pace of the journey changed, gone completely out of our control. The ride back up the river is fast and thrilling, and ever so different from the canoe trip down the Green. There are beautiful places, and we loved watching the boys pluck up 15 more folks from their campsites along the Colorado, and so there was people watching close up. 

 

883 : 1055

The Colorado is big and busy, and it loops around crazily, just like the Green, only in a grander fashion ... tuning up, perhaps, for its plunge past the rapids and into Grand Canyon (although rudely interrupted by Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell.) Halfway from Spanish Bottom to the take-out at Potash, we glimpsed our first evidence of civilization: the stack of a privy at a campground accessible by 4-wheel drive as well as from the river, where we stopped for a quick lunch.


884 : 1053

Getting nearer to civilization, we jetted below Dead Horse Point, a state park high above the river, where we knew there were people watching us, but we couldn't see them. At Potash, the jetboat gets hauled off the river onto the back of an 18-wheeler and we climbed on a converted schoolbus for the ride back into Moab. First thing on our agenda: showers! And then the laundromat. And then a superb dinner that we didn't need to cook ourselves, or wash dishes after ... and a quiet warm night between fresh, unsilty sheets.

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