There
is a place on the river called Mendenhall Loop. There are two
reasons to stop here. The first reason is to register for the
campsites along the river below. The second reason is that there
is a cabin of a miner that's situated on a thin part of the earth
between these entrenched meanders. This is one of those spots on
the river where you can cover about 2 miles on the river and end up a
mere quarter mile from where you started. In the picture to the
right, you can see Tom (as a miniscule speck) next to the cabin.
The river is seen to the right in the picture but is also just out of
the picture to the left. Someday, the river may erode through this
goose neck and leave the meander behind, high and dry, but not in our
lifetimes.
On
the trail up to the cabin, we saw this lizard. There are lots of
lizards along the San Juan. They seem to always be either
scampering away from you or doing push ups. I guess that's to
impress the girl lizards.
A
little further down the river, you come to Honnaker Trail. The
story goes that there was a sort of a gold rush around here and this guy
named Honnaker was going to get rich the best way he knew how, by
supplying the miners, placers and dredgers with food and
equipment. He sank lots of time and all of his money into building
this trial. It goes up and up and up. It's a steep
escarpment trail, which means it's pretty damned exposed in spots.
And I don't mind telling you it made me a bit nervous to be that
exposed. A mule is said to have fallen off the trail somewhere
when they were first using it.
But
what the real problem was for 
Honnaker
was there just wasn't much gold to be found in the San Juan. And
all the miners left. Honnaker was broke and committed
suicide. Little did he know how much modern river runners would
one day enjoy the fruits of his labor.
