Day 2: Hermit Creek to Colorado River
Noon siesta in Monument Creek
Camping by the Colorado River
Guillermo, Elisabeth, Jaime
Pumping water through the filter
Rafters on Granite Rapids
Lizards love Guillermo's backpack
Simulation of the squirrel's theft
Mud figurine shrine
Adding to the Shrine
Creative expressions
June 12, 2004
The next day, fully recovered, and with a smaller walking stretch of about 7km for our day, we set out around 10am to reach the Colorado River at the junction with Monument Creek around four hours later, including a one hour nap break. The campsite directly on the Colorado River bank was a wonderful location, which we enjoyed for a full evening and most of the next day. We camped on a sand hill close to the river from which we could observe the passing rafting expeditions. The evening passed just observing the river, cooking, eating, playing poker, looking at the stars, reading Oscar Wilde and reviewing some Danish vocabulary.
June 13, 2004
Among the rafts that we saw was a group that had set out from a town up the river to make an impressive 18-day rafting tour down to Lake Mead. We spent some time exploring Granite Rapids, where we found a sort of shrine to the mud-people, little mud figurines produced by hikers with the Colorado sands and left on an exposed rock to be dried by the heat. We could not resist producing our own figurines and adding them to the collection. After that, we took a short bath in the freezing waters of the Colorado and we went back to the camp to find out that the squirrels had done some damage to our backpacks for the second time. The first squirrel attack had taken place through the night when they carved a hole in one of our backpacks to reach some tasty nuts. The second raid had given them a loot of Ramen noodles. After that experience, we decided to stick close to our backpacks wherever there were no food-storage metal boxes or when there were no trees from which to hang our bags, as was the case this time.
