Utah: Day 8 - Canoe Trip 3

Our last day of the canoe trip was pretty relaxed. We woke up to a gorgeous morning view of the river:We had to get to our take-out site by 1pm, but since we only had to travel 8 miles, which takes about 2.5 hours if we paddled the whole time, we didn't rush as we ate breakfast and got ready in the morning. Once on the water, we took it easy, paddling half the time and floating the other half, taking pictures and goofing around.We floated the last mile in the river to the take-out site, called Mineral Bottom. Here, we dragged our canoes out of the water and unloaded our gear onto the beach, then found some shade to sit and wait for our ride. We arrived 45 minutes before our ride was going to arrive, so we ate lunch and chatted with the crazy old hippy who lived down at Mineral Bottom. His name was Alan, and he volunteered for the Parks Department to collect paddlers' river licenses and make sure everyone was safe after their trips. He was nice enough, but he was really weird and proceeded to share with us his research 'theories', which basically consisted of him making vague connections between two things and correlating them. For example, he started off asking us why birds rotate their eggs in the nest and lizards don't? Then he went on to tell us that it's because mammals need to always be moving in a magnetic field and that if we set up rotating magnets (like he has, over his bed) at the right frequency, we would double our lifespan! Anyway, you get the point - coo-coo! But we were polite and just listened, not commenting. This apparently encouraged him, because apparently he gets in arguments with lots of other paddlers, so our lack of discussion with him was taking as encouragement for him to tell us more. In any case, we had a long time with Alan, because our ride broke down at the top of the hill coming down to get us, and was an hour late. Some 4x4 jeeps came down the hill to tell us our ride was fixing the engine and would be down there soon. We were really glad when Jerry finally made it down the hill to us, and we loaded up and headed back up up up the hill.
To get out of Mineral Bottom, we had to drive up 800 feet over 1 mile. It was pretty steep with lots of switchbacks on a very bumpy road. It didn't help that we could see a car that had fallen over the cliff way below us.Once back at the outfitters, we loaded our gear back into Ian's car and took a picture with the outfitters.Then, we were off! Well, sort of. First we stopped at the grocery store in Moab and got some food for dinner, then we started driving back to Salt Lake City, where we were spending Friday night. The drive was about 4 hours and we arrived around 9pm, having no trouble finding our hotel and checking in with our internet reservation. Then, we all had SHOWERS!! The best showers ever! None of us had showered for four days, so we were feeling really dirty, plus most of us had rashes from the heat, bug bites from mosquitos or sand flies (nasty little creatures, similar to deer flies), scratches and dry skin. I've never had my skin feel so rough and gross! The shower cured the dirt problems, and lotion helped with the dry skin, however it took a week or so for my skin to start feeling normal again!