Day 9 - Willy Wonka's Chocolate River

After a windy night with the rapids as my sound machine, we woke to a strange sight.  I looked out at the river and thought something was wrong with my eyes.  I blinked and blinked again but it still looked strange, weird lighting I thought.  Walking to breakfast, I got the word to wear clothes that could be thrown away.  A flash flood had happened sometime upstream and the river had turned very brownish red.  The Colorado (color-red) earned its name.  It looked just the river of chocolate in Willy Wonka's factory.  The rapids looked like churning hot cocoa but smelled very earthy/dusty--no hair washing today.  We all marveled at the change.  The water even looked thicker.

Mark saved a bucket of clean water that had been filtered but not used so I could wash my gritty-stringy hair.  It felt good but once we got into the first rapids, it was all undone.

We got into Tess's raft again with the Johnsons.  After a few rapids, we stopped and hiked up to a site with a few petroglyphs.  They weren't what I expected, but the hike was fun and a little challenging.  Mark saw Cole jump up a big rock like a mountain lion and he wanted to do that too.  After three tries, he made it up but near as gracefully.  

Back in the rafts, we went through a big rapid and we headed straight for a huge several story lava rock wall.  I heard Tess swear and start yelling "high side" over and over again with her voice pitch raising at each exclamation.  We didn't remember our instructions given 8 days ago.  As we bumped into the sharp wall, I was sure the raft would be pierced and deflate underneath us, but it just bumped and one side started to raise as the current is very strong against the rock.  I yelled to Lynn in the back to move over to Carol Sue, so he did and with all of us on the "high side", we pulled away from the wall and went around it safe and sound.  I was a little shaken up after that.

We went about 34 miles today.  It was a long day of flat water with a few rapids.  Tess did lots of rowing.  Carol Sue kept getting after Lynn to help row as she felt sorry for Tess.  Mark and Lynn tried their hand at rowing and it was harder than it looked.  

We dropped off people who wanted to jump off of some rocks right on the river.  Mark did it and then swam through a rapid in the chocolate river.  

The last night was on a sandy, but weedy beach.  There were lots of bugs and it was a tough night.  I couldn't wait to be done.  I looked at Mark and asked if he would ever do this again and he said no and I said I wouldn't either.  It was one night too long in our opinions.  Maybe if it had been 8 nights on the river we would have still thought it was too long.  We are just so excited to be clean and sleep on a soft bed.  We did enjoy the chile relleno casserole for dinner.  

Every night when we pull into camp, the guides filled up buckets with river water to prepare for the next day on the river.  They added some drops of flocculant and stirred the water and the sand dropped to the bottom and then they sent it through a filter.  This is the water we would drink the next day.  Tonight, it was very dirty and I could not believe it would be clean enough to drink in the morning.