Desert Paddling

July 1: From Vegas I drove Jim back to San Diego, primarily to pick up my sea kayak which as been sitting at the University of San Diego since last summer. The story of this kayak is long and sordid, but suffice it to say that the School for Field Studies gave me a bargain I couldn't refuse last summer and I ended up owning a second boat. After transporting it up the length of the Baja peninsula, last August, USD generously let me store it till I could come get it.

While in San Diego I also got to meet with Jim and Michel over our coming Kenya trip. I haven't been to Kenya since 1998 and I'm excited to see the place again. I used to go over there all the time when I worked for SFS and I still have a couple of friends that work there. I'm looking forward to seeing them again. We leave in mid-July and will be over there for a couple of weeks working on a water quality project in the southern part of the country.

Leaving San Diego, I spent a couple of days with my Aunt Jean and Uncle Jack in Arcadia. It's always great to visit with them - I don't get to see them often enough. We had a good visit and I headed out transport my new boat to the desert - an irony that is not at all lost on me. After a quick stop in Vegas again to hang with John and enjoy another small loss in a cash game, I continued northward.

Where's the water at?

Instead of heading directly back to Sandy, I decided to take the boat to Lake Powell for a couple of days of paddling. I decided to paddle out of Hite Marina, a couple of miles south (and on the other side of the lake) from Bullfrog - a marina a group of us staged a previous Lake Powell trip from. To get there, I drove south around the lake and came up through Monument Valley and then the town of Mexican hat. What a cool name for a town. From there, the map said that Utah State road 261 would take me to Hite. Sometimes a line on a map is more than you imagined it would be. This road went into the shear side of a mountain and began to climb what looked like an impossible face. As the sun set, I kept going up hairpin turn after hairpin turn as pavement turned to dirt. There were no guard rails and many places were barely a single lane. This is the most exciting road I've ever traveled in Utah.

By the time I got to the top, the sun had nearly set and the cactus and sand of Monument Valley turned to Aspen and evergreen. I found a lonely deserted BLM road and camped for the night. The next morning arriving at Lake Powell.  The boat handled great and it is much better at handling overnights than my other boat. Lake Powell was wicked hot and I decided to limit my time there to just a couple of days. Powell is a bizarre place - blue water in the middle of red rock and yellow sand. There's not a tree to be seen and at mid-day, shade is a heat-dazed fantasy. You can always jump in the water to cool off, but there is no way to escape the sun. It's a huge place, but there are boats everywhere and you really can't get by yourself for very long. I spent the better part of an hour paddling up one side canyon, but the entire time I was surrounded by buzzing ski boats and jet skis. Not the solitude I was looking for. After a couple of days, I was ready to head for home.