This past weekend was the one and only KB aka Mama Bear aka Freedom Toes aka She Who Hikes W/Guidebook’s befday weekend. It was written many lifetimes ago that said weekend would be a celebration of epic proportions or basically whatever the hell she wants to do.
So we shifted to plan B.
As per the Mooseknuckler Cycling Alliance Bible, we did just that. She had planned to go back to Death Valley as we had a bitchin time there last year. Fortunately, the absolutely inept elected officials decided to “shutdown” the government over building a ridiculous wall. This left the NPS lacking funds and most of the campgrounds not functioning.
I drop my pack, slip off my shirt, slide the flask of whiskey out and then proceed to slowly lower myself into the hot spring. This is what we came for and this is what was on the agenda for the next 2 days.
Our Plan B was to hike down Goldstrike Canyon to the Colorado just below the Hoover Dam. After the “easy” 2.6 mile hike, we would put in and float around the river making our way to the springs that flow through the limestone and bubble up through the ground.
And at some point we would have to paddle a total of 14 miles down to Willow Beach to make it back to motorized travel. We knew this would require swinging those oars because the river ain’t really a river at this point. It’s clear, like you can see the bottom and weird rock formations under you clear, and flat. So flat that it takes pretty much the same amount of effort to go upstream as it does to go down. More on this below.
A few minutes ago, we were at Brother and Sister Meinkey’s house. We call him the Planner, cuz it’s kind of his thing. He also ends up being the official official photographer on most Alliance outings. I can hold my own behind a camera, but you know, he’s actually what you would call talented. Seeing that he joined the Alliance many minutes ago, he has at least 7 photos of our journeyings.
We were sitting around the kitchen, shooting the shit, talking about future plans and stuff. The computer was on and shuffling through his photo collection. Of course, we don’t do shitty trips so every photo that popped up was, “Dude, that was a good trip.” and, “Oh man, I’d forgotten about that.” Chortle. Laugh. Sip beer. Reminisce.
And then it got to, “We ended up in the Grand Gulch because we couldn’t go to the Grand Canyon. That was a killer Plan B.”
“Is that a photo from 50 mile canyon?”
“Yup. We still haven’t done Death Hollow.”
“Oh yeah, 50 mile was our Plan B. That was a damn awesome Plan B.”
“Let’s just do Plan Bs from now on.”
We floated around, soaked in hot springs and drank beer at 8 am. There was never much of a hurry involved in this trip all the way up until that moment when we started paddling toward the car.
Packrafts are bitchin little boats. They make lots of things doable and I highly recommend them to anyone who likes to get out. One thing they do not do well is flat water. Can you paddle flat water? Of course. It’s just going to take you about twice as long compared to say a canoe. There were plenty of people in canoes on the river. They passed us. Multiple times. As they had time to screw around and could paddle and rest and still be moving in the same direction.
Needless to say, we paid our dues that morning and into the afternoon.
There wasn’t any of us that weren’t sore in one way or another the next day. Not moving felt pretty good come Monday morning, but if you were to ask a member of the Alliance if they wished they hadn’t gone, you would get a resounding no.
We’ll just drop this one in the Plan B folder and use it as a reason to skip A and go straight to B.
P. L. and R.