Utah: Day 6 - Canoe Trip 1

On Wednesday, we started our canoe trip. We got up really early to pack our gear and pick up our canoe license - we forgot to get it ahead of time, so we were stuck scrambling the day of our canoe trip! It was a little stressful, but it was no problem in the end to get our free license from the information centre. Next, we drove over to our canoe outfitter, the Red River Canoe Company, and 'checked in'. This included us paying our fees, buying a river map book and learning out a few unpleasant things like the 'river toilet' we had to bring along with us. Next, we loaded our gear into the red Silverado and prepared to drive out to our drop-off spot. We were getting dropped off with another group of four, so we all squeezed into the vehicle and drove north on the highway for about an hour. Then, we turned off onto a dirt road which ultimately leads to a hillbilly ranch called 'Ruby Ranch'. We had to pay a fee per canoe and person to use the boat launch on the Ruby Ranch lands, however it's cheaper to launch there than at the State Park farther upstream, so it seemed a fair deal to us. Once at the boat launch, we unloaded quickly and loaded up our canoes.There was another outfitter unloading another group around the same time as us. This other group of men were taking one of the large, 18 foot rafts down the river and they were LOADED to the hilt!! They even brought their BBQ! You can see in the picture above that our canoe wasn't really that full. I had felt silly at first that we were going to bring our cooler down the river, however once I saw how much other people were bringing, I realized we underpacked! I guess that's the Canadian way - it's not supposed to be like BBQing in our backyard when we're going down the river!

We started out on the river promptly after loading the canoes, and at first the landscape was pretty plain. There were trees on the shore of the river and some low cliffs, but quite quickly the cliffs got larger and more interesting. The river itself was very calm and with little current, so most of our forward motion was generated by our paddling. Garrett quickly taught me the best way to paddle a canoe and we worked on synchronizing our strokes.You can see below that the cliffs started getting more interesting:There were these really neat bird's nests on the cliffs:The nests look like the birds masticated their food and then built up little homes with the mush they made. That would make sense if birds have teeth...so I'm not really sure how they made them. Maybe they just collected mud from the side of the river. I think the birds themselves were some sort of starling, although they flew quite quickly and we didn't get a good look at them.

Since we launched around 10:30am, we only paddled a little while before stopping for lunch. We found a neat little beach in the shade, although we did end up in a bit of quicksand near the shore when we hopped out of our canoes. There are several kinds of river bottom that we came across. The two main ones were your standard sandy bottom or a silty, sinky, quicksand-like bottom. In any case, no one got too stuck, although Ian almost lost a shoe. We soon learned to take our shoes off before hopping out of our canoes - better to get a dirty foot than to lose a sandal!
Here is Garrett eating lunch:Our canoes on the beach at lunchtime:After lunch, we paddled for another few hours and the cliffs steadily got bigger. The river itself makes large lazy bends back and forth. You can't find anything resembling rapids, so I felt quite comfortable in our boat.

Our next stop along the river was at a valley on the outside of a bend, called Trin Alcove. It had a really cool petroglyph, which, unfortunately, our picture came out really fuzzy. We took some pictures from up top of some rocks near the petroglyph, looking out at the river:

You can see the river is really brown. From farther away, it actually looks green (seems odd, I know, but it's true) and this is why it was named the Green River. The siltiness of the river is disconcerting when you swim, since you can't see your legs at all, and it makes your clothes dirty, but overall it's harmless. After Trin Alcove, we decided to float downstream with our boats for awhile to cool off. We strapped on our lifejackets and grabbed the lead ropes of the canoe and off we floated. It was really fun and really relaxing - in fact, I had trouble just floating and not swimming while we went. We floated for about an hour, until we actually felt a little cold when the wind came up, then we climbed back in the canoes at a shallow area.

As we paddled downstream, we saw a number of cliff structures which we called 'amphitheatres':These are big round alcoves in the cliffs that echo incredibly when you yell, even when we were only in the canoes. They almost seem like they were made to be theatres, since a number of them had 'stages' in the middle at the bottom. Pretty cool.

As we neared our campsite around 3:30pm, Garrett did something silly. He noticed the river was quite shallow - probably knee height, using his paddle as a measure. So, without warning me, he decided to climb out and swim the rest of the way to the campsite. He stepped out of the canoe, expecting the bottom to be right there, except that the depth of the river had changed suddenly and was now over his head. SPLASH! He went right over the edge, rocking the boat really good. I screamed, because I didn't know what had happened. I thought we were flipping our canoe for sure, and all I could think of was that Garrett's camera was going overboard too. I looked back to see Garrett in the river with a sheepish look on his face and I got angry!! My heart had stopped and he was just being foolish. In any case, now he had to swim with the canoe and I had to paddle us in to our campsite alone. It's really annoying to paddle the canoe on your own, because with every stroke on one side, the boat turns. Plus, Garrett can't swim as fast as the canoe can be paddled, so he trailed behind and couldn't really help me at all. Add to that, the wind came up at that point and started pushing us around, and I was pretty annoyed by the time we got in to shore. Here we are:In the end we worked it out, but I told him he must never do that again!

Our campsite was really nice and we had it all to ourselves. The rule on the river is that if someone is occupying a campsite, you head on to the next one, unless it's after 8pm and then you can share the campsite. In any case, we were at the campsite quite early and claimed it for our own. It had a really nice beach that we used to swim and refresh ourselves. We also played on the rocks, jumping off them into the river:
Before we ate dinner, we went on a walk past our campsite on a poorly-used little trail, because there were supposedly petroglyphs and graineries nearby. I say supposedly, because we searched for just under an hour to find these petroglyphs and didn't find a thing. We did, however, find the grainery, although it's not as clear as the ones on the Aztec Butte trail.There were also a ton of these little guys all over our campsite:They were so cute and would constantly pause, allowing us to snap their photo.

Once we started dinner, we opened up the cooler and cracked open a few of the beer we had brought with us. I can tell you, even Budweiser tastes good after a day of paddling in the heat!We started our fire in our fire pan. We actually used a fire log, since they are small and burn away completely to ash. As well, the ones we bought actually produced less carbon dioxide than wood would have, so they were better for the environment. In any case, we lazed around, using our lifejackets as seats.We didn't stay up too late that night. When brushing our teeth in the river, we noticed this little guy under the edge of our canoe:Toad! He posed quite nicely for us too. Wild life everywhere.