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| The bottom
third of Flaming Gorge is in the canyons of Horseshoe, Kingfisher, and
Flaming Gorge. You begin to feel as though something was lost when
you get here. You know that these walls that tower over you should
dwarf you entirely. That there was once fast moving water moving
through the canyon floor. Now you see a death zone of sorts where
the water fluctuates. Trees in that zone are bleached white as are
the rocks. Some describe it as a bathtub ring. Whatever way
you describe it, it's not natural.
We made it to Cedar Springs Marina early and our shuttler came right out and we shoved the raft onto a trailer and then back off again on the other side of the dam. There were a lot of guided fishermen out there trying to catch the same trophy trout that another guy had caught a mere half hour ago so that he can take a photo of it to put in his wallet. And he pays handsomely for this privilege. Seemed weird. But that wasn't the only weird thing for us. The river running clear and cold and rapid again was a shock to our senses but we were very happy to see it. We felt a bit lazy as the river carried us down and we flicked the oars here and there.
At the Lodore Campground, we cleaned the raft as we had an extra day. We also patched the raft as it had chaffed a bit at an earlier campsite. In the process, we had turned the raft over on an "emergency" blanket which we used as our kitchen floor. We use a tarp to keep the crumbs introduced into the environment to a minimum. A wind storm came up and we are usually extremely careful about leaving stuff out in the wind to be blown away. I thought, I wonder if the floor is okay. Then I thought you know I'm always worried about stuff that I don't need to be worried about, after all the raft weighs 120 lbs, what wind is going to blow that over? Well, of course, when I went to down to the river the wind had flipped the boat over and the kitchen floor was no where to be seen. We searched up and down the shore and inland a little ways but to no avail. The next morning we cast off to head into Lodore. Angie says, "Isn't that the kitchen floor?" I don't see it but ask her where I need to row to. Sure enough it's snagged in some brush along the shore. |
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