Colorado Adventures (day 6)

So the plan was to paddle the Royal Gorge section of the Arkansas, but Renee got a call from Lisa and Jon, who really wanted to paddle that section, but couldn’t join us today. So we offered to do a different section of the river today, the section of the river immediately before the Royal Gorge. They we pleased that we would wait for them. So we loaded up and headed down the Canon City which is about 2 hours south of Denver. It was an uneventful drive. We saw a camouflaged B57, Some parachuters and some gliders. Well, the others saw them, I did not since I was driving. Speaking of driving, why the moment I start driving do we hit a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. Turns out the mountains around the Royal Gorge have been having wild fires for the last several days. So while the firefighters were fighting the fires as they came close to the highway, they would close off one side of the road and use a pilot car to guide the next group of cars through the stretch of road. So after sitting and waiting for our turn to follow the pilot car, we finally got to the take out of the Pinnacle Rock section of the Arkansas. There we noticed a sign that said the Royal Gorge section of the Arkansas was closed to boating. Apparently firefighting planes had been using the water in the gorge to put out fires. We thought it would be a good idea not to paddle in sections of the river where they could possibly scoop us up and dump us on a wild fire. As a good thing Jon and Lisa had called so we changed which section of the river we were going to run. We headed to the put-in. Renee was feeling better, so she had decided to join us today. I was feeling warn out. This was day five of running rivers, the hardest day, the hump day. Good thing it was Wednesday. Once you get through Day 5, the rest would be easy. After Todd ran shuttle and got a ride back up to the putin from a nice shuttle bunny for a local raft outfitter, we got on the river. Over all this section of the river was nice. Nothing too challenging, maybe a class 3+ at one point or another, but mostly it was a relaxing day. We got out at the take-out. After loading the car we stopped in at a local outfitter to find out if the ban on the Gorge had been lift, they did not know. They did suggest that we check with the Arkansas Headwaters Recreational Association later in the day or the morning to find out. So in case we were not able to run the Gorge, we decided to go to Salida to get a hotel room.


After getting a room at Super 8, we logged on to find out that they had lifted the ban on the Royal Gorge. We spent the remainder of the day watching eating dinner, watching TV, and messing around online. We also had two queen beds. Todd and Renee got one, Joe and I had the other. I luckily had brought my own sheet, so I slept on top of the covers while Joe slept under them. It was a rough night. Joe does not just roll over, he flings himself into other positions. Luckily he only hit me once. I am not sure how Holly manages. More power to her.