Wednesday, September 26 -- No rain last night but the high humidity from the wet sand left the inside of the rain fly dripping wet. We left the tents set up to dry while some of us went for a hike. Perhaps bushwhack would be a better term! We found an old beaver slide that helped for the first 10 feet. Then it got interesting!
We eventually worked our way through the tamarisk (also known as saltcedar) thickets that grow along the river, and left a bright bandanna so we'd know where to start on our way back.
One of the reasons this area was important to the Anasazi was because of the abundance of chert which they used to make tools and arrow points.
If you kept your eyes open, you'd spot lots of interesting things. Here a chert scraper lies near a stone for grinding grain.
Some of the structures still have hand prints in the mud used to seal the walls.
In addition to the obvious historical artifacts, the view across to Soda Springs Basin is beautiful, even if it is raining lightly -- so much for dry tents!
Even with the bandanna flag to indicate our starting point, we managed to lose the earlier path through the tammies and popped out about 50 yards closer to camp.
After a bite of lunch, we loaded the boats and launched for parts unknown, looking for a nice sandbar somewhere between mile 14 and mile 11. The river was running red from the runoff resulting from yesterday's storm.
Camp ended up on river right just past the mile 12 corner. It was a high class camp, complete with warm showers for the ladies.
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