This past weekend, Troop 774 took a canoe trek down the
Colorado River. I had taken canoe training with the council but had never
been on the river. Most of the others were new to it as well. We
had a skills training day earlier so everyone knew what to expect.
We headed up Friday evening. I was the first one to
arrive at the our base camp at Park Moabi. After grabbing a camp site,
the others slowly trickled in until late at night.
In the morning, the outfitters (Jerkwater) showed up with
the canoes. They gave us a safety and navigation briefing and we headed
off to the departure point. We put in at a park in Needles. The
idea was to canoe back to base camp today, then float the gorge on
Sunday. Bengt and I were in the point and the float down was great but
uneventful. The only drawback was the view. The river is below
grade for most of this section, so you can’t really see anything. When we
got to the entry for the Moabi, the wind was picking up and we had to drag the
canoes back up to the camp from the shore. We had an awesome dinner and
campfire before everyone headed to bed.
Sunday morning, we got an early start so we could make our
exit time. Everyone was excited as we floated under the bridge and
entered Topok Gorge. The gorge had great scenery! We made a rest
stop on a sand bar then made a lunch stop at the petroglyphs. Since we
were in the point, we had to find the path through the reeds to get to Castle
Rock. It was harder than it sounds but we finally found it. It was
so narrow we could hardly paddle. For the day, we got lucky since we had
the wind at our backs and we got to Castle Rock early. We called
Jerkwater and they can and picked us up.
Before heading out on the long ride home, we had one
snafu. One dad lost his car keys. Since it was a rental, he need to
get a tow to Las Vegas and get a new car on Monday. But I lent him my
cell phone and we had plenty of food for them so it worked out great.
Can’t wait for the next trip out there.
by Shelley Costa Bloomfield – a great book on Poe that read in preparation for our recent Baltimore trip
by Edgar Allan Poe - read the highlights
by Charles C. Mann - very enlightening book on the Columbian Exchange
by Denis Clifford - good intro to the confusing
world of estate planning
by Peter D. Schiff - had some decent spots but the advice
wasn't to my liking