Kayak Trip

On August 16th, Stanford, Taya and I set out for an 11 1/2 mile kayaking trip down the Colorado River. We planned this trip well in advance due to the limited number of launch permits they give out to kayakers. We were dropped off with a group at the base of the Hoover Dam and Stanford, Taya and I set out for our adventure at 9:15am ... due to meet at the end point at 3:30pm. The day was perfect: warm and sunny but with an an unexpected situation: wind. The wind didn't affect us too much the first few miles. We leisurely took our time and kayaked through caves and got out and explored a hot spring with a sauna cave, then swam around in the warm water.

After that we got back in our kayaks and set out to try and find another hot spring. It was a pretty rough couple miles that we were trying to get in synch with each others rowing and also battling the waves made by many jet ski's and boats. We finally got to a beach and decided to take a break and eat some lunch. This would be our last stop of the day (at 12:30pm) due to the strong winds that were starting up. We had 7 miles left to go and only 3 hours. It was quite an overwelming task ahead of us. As we set out we had no idea just how grueling it would be. I honestly don't know how we did it. I got sick at one of the windiest points in the trip and poor Stanford was in a kayak all by himself that was geared toward white water kayaking, not kayaking headlong into wind on a river. We were half an hour late to our destination and we really thought we'd never get there. But what kept us going was the beautiful scenery and the billy goats we would see every once in a while along the shore. And once we got to land and our arms were still intact, we thought, ah, we did it! And as we stumbled home and chatted about our triumph over the sea, we thought, hey, maybe next year we'll do it again....