If you missed it, go back to Part 1. . .

We last saw our intrepid voyagers in their tent in the gathering dusk, rain and wind.

Now dinner, canned chili, and then pump up the thermarest for Sandie. So far so good, but now Erik blows up his huge 6" thick mattress. We really laughed as he tried to get on it, to no avail. Wait, maybe if some air comes out and it is folded lengthwise... We had some really good laughs and finally got organized when the rain slowed again and all of a sudden this SOUND. Sticking our heads out, Erik thought there was a waterfall coming down the opposite bank above the red shelf of rock, but Sandie realised it was A GEYSER on the other side where we might have tried to camp. (Ah-ha, travertine not Morrison) It didn't last very long but every time there was a good downpour it went off again. Water dripped in in a couple of places, wind whipped and there was a car that sounded near on our side of the river which Erik could not find but it finally got loose and left.

Back in the thirties, someone bored a hole prospecting for something - I forget what - and got a geyser of hot water which ran for a number of years, so this spot is named "Crystal Geyser": the geyser petered out and the books say that it only runs intermittently now. The good thing was that we finally knew just where we were because the geyser was there. The bad news was that we had made about 3.5 miles. We needed to average 12 miles a day. We were getting quite nervous about making it and about being able to stop in a place where we gt stuff on to the shore without Muck. Define Muck as black mayonaise.

Sandie took a photo with Erik's camera, although the light was pretty bad. It turns out no one at Tag-a-long has ever seen the geyser blow: apparently you need a hard rain, and only a couple of travellers in a tent would be there in a bad rain. Maybe that's why the guy in the minivan showed up - in hopes of seeing it. I then decided that maybe the red rock was travertine stained with iron, which turned out to be correct. Hope the photo is OK!

So, on went the interminable night. Several leaks developed in the tent, and Erik was using one of the life vests to keep my feet out of the puddles by the door. Naturally, with the cold and the excitement, we had to pee frequently. Waiting for a suitable lull in the rain tended to get agonizng. Rain, sleet, wind shaking things and kept the noise level up, yet all in all we got more sleep than would have seemed possible.

Come (finally) morning we were drinking our coffee as the rain spatters outside (one of the first rules of camping we broke was to cook in the tent) and both thinking maybe we should lay over a day since Erik's radio had stated that the rain would continue off and on and that the temp nearby would be in the low 30's. We were actually talking about walking out to a phone since the trip felt doomed. We went for fun and this was not qualifying. We were afraid that the next possible get-out, a place called Ruby Ranch about 20 more miles down the river, would not be recognized and there were more rifles than we had originally heard about and we were already way behind. Miss that, and the trip HAS to go to the end, the one other access, called "Mineral Bottom" about ½ way down is inaccessible in wet weather due to slippery roads down steep cliffs.

Sandie had to pee (naturally) and was sitting partially out of the tent when I said: "Do you hear a car?" She said no, but stuck some more of her body (her head) out of the tent and said: "Yes! There's a truck!" By the time she got in and I got out, there was just a truck with an all-terrain vehicle in tow on a little trailer sitting on the other side. Nobody in sight. I hollered "Halooo" a few times, and two guys got out. Turns out we could almost talk - its only about 100 yards wide, but I'm glad I initially yelled, they might have just driven away.

Anyway, the guy says: "Are you OK?" and I said "Well....not really!" Asked if he had a cell phone, and he said yes and if that wouldn't work he could call in on the radio and have the dispatcher call Tag-a-long for us. So he called, and said they would be here in about 2 or more hours. With that they drove off.

We DID feel a little wimpy asking to be picked up, but just before the guys came I had listened to a radio station from Price, Utah, a bit northwest of where we were, and the normal daytime high 70's, night 40's had changed to another day or two of rain, highs in the fifties and lows in the low thirties.

Only 1 ½ hours later when we were just pushing off for the other side, here comes our Tag-a-Long guy, and off we went after carrying all our stuff up the rock to his trailer.

Later that day (which was grey and rainy in Moab) we drove west into the Wasatch Mountains and were surprised to see 4-6 inches of snow only about 2,000 feet higher than we had been camped, so we were assured that we had made the right decision. Several hundred miles west in Ely, Nevada, the proprietor of the cafe where we ate had gone to Salt Lake City leaving the air conditioning running in the cafe! Her son called and said "Don't come home" and spent the rest of his day draining pipes for people and generally winterizing. There was 4-6 inches of snow on the roofs and yards, two days later when we came thru. We had come late in the season to escape the summer heat, but outsmarted ourselves.

Seeing someone the previous night, and a Bureau of Land Management truck in the morning, it was like "Nature's Way" of telling us to get the hell out. As the driver said: "Discretion is the better part of valour."

Mixed emotions though. Crystal Geyser is only 4 ½ miles - at that rate we wouldn't have made our pickup date, and though "runnable" the river was so low that gravel bars were unusually common, and the sludge usually on the very bottom was lining the banks. Had we not jumped when we did, we would have had to tough it out the entire 120 miles, and the pick-up boat if it misses you comes back daily until you show up. And they charge you the pick-up fee every day.

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