Last Thursday morning we piled into the car and headed off to the Colorado River for the first trip of the season. The river is one of my favorite places to be, and I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. Normally we’re on the California side at Big River staying in a 5th wheel, but for this trip we tent camped up on the Arizona side at Buckskin Mountain State Park.
I am not a fan of tent camping. I’m a bit of a princess in this aspect. But this was not the tent camping I expected. There were clean restrooms and showers close to the site, electrical hookups in every cabana (which is a little like a carport with some shelves for your stuff), and running water easily accessible. Everyone brought air mattresses, and Kathy & JG brought a mini-fridge for food, so it’s not like we were roughing it.
By mid-afternoon we were all unpacked, had the tents and canopies set up, and were ready to relax and hang out. We drove into Parker for a delicious dinner at El Sarape, one of the only Mexican restaurants I actually like eating at. The food is always good, but the service is usually terrible. Thankfully, it was a Thursday night on a quiet weekend, so we had no problems with the service at all. The food was good, as usual, and the company was great. We spent the rest of the night hanging out and chatting before going to bed.
Due to the sun, and the loudmouth birds nearby, we were awake by 7am on Friday morning. Those of you who know me well know that this is not my best time of day. I was cranky and tired, but I think I hid it well. We lazed around for part of the morning, and then packed the coolers and headed out to the boats. At this point there were 12 people in our group, and 4 boats. This was more than a little amusing to me. It worked out well that we had extra boats, however, as Jen and Red’s boat had some problems and had to be brought back and tied up. We drove up to Parker Dam and floated most of the way down river. We eventually ended up at the south dam where we anchored and hung out for a few hours. I’d never seen this part of the river before, as there’s a dam in between Big River and Parker Strip, and we’re usually south of it. Parker Strip is really busy and crowded, and kind of made me miss the (relative) quiet of Big River. We did have fun hanging out there, however. My friends are quite entertaining when they’re drunk. When we got back, we took turns playing Beans (just a simple bean bag toss game, that everyone is quite competitive about) and then settled down to eat dinner. Kathy & JG had purchased a brand new barbecue just for this trip, and on the drive there it managed to jump out of the back of the truck, missing both the truck and the boat they towed behind them, without making a sound. I still contend that a band of Fast & the Furious type barbecue thieves drove up next to them, lifted out the barbecue and drove off without notice. Sadly, I think the gust of wind theory is more likely. So they bought another barbecue and we all shared it for dinner. The food was delicious (it’s amazing how tasty a barbecued burger can be when you’re outdoors) and we spent the rest of the night just sitting around the fire pit making s’mores and waiting for the rest of our friends to arrive. (It took them 6 hours to make a 3 hour trip.) They finally arrived at around 1am, and I went to bed, though a bunch of them stayed up and were loud for a while longer.
Saturday was much like Friday. We were up at the crack of dawn (in my world) and drove down river to one of the many food places that you can dock your boat at. We had a nice breakfast and then went back to camp to pack the coolers for another day on the river. I discovered I failed Sunscreen 101 on Friday, when I saw that my foot had visible finger marks on it where I had put the sunscreen. Apparently I forgot to rub it in. I also missed a stripe on my inner arm, so that was a lovely shade of pink as well. I rock. I made sure to fix those lovely mistakes on Saturday, and ended the weekend with a light tan (which for my fair skin, was exactly what I wanted). The water was colder than I liked, so I spent much of the time alternating between sitting on the boat getting fried, and standing in the water trying not to shiver. When we got back to camp Saturday night, we barbecued steaks and chicken for dinner (and by “we” I mean everyone else did. Donald was tired and went to bed before we had dinner, so I just ate some of the chicken and salad that Kathy put in front of me). We passed the rest of the night around the fire pit, watching Claudia create a huge fire.
Sunday morning came early again, and most everyone was gone by 9. It seemed like such a waste of a day to me, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Donald and I stayed to help Kathy & JG pull their boat out of the water, and the 4 of us left Buckskin around 11. We all had a really great weekend, and I’m looking forward to spending many more weekends at the river this summer.
Big thanks to Kathy & JG for letting everyone hang out on their boat all weekend, for feeding me on Saturday night, and for just being great friends. You guys are awesome!
