Canoeing the Rio Grande

Between a really cold and wet winter and working on what seemed like the only nice days for our entire five months as volunteers in Big Bend National Park, we thought we were going to get away without ever getting to do a river trip.  But at the 11th hour (actually it was the very next day after our last day in the visitor center) there was a call for volunteers to do a river patrol.

The weather looked to be great and the patrol was just a one-day paddle.  Usually the patrols would last for two or three days.  We did not have time for that now so we were very lucky that this was going to be a short one.

Short is a relative term though.  The course we are taking is Gravel Pit to Rio Grande Village and will have us paddling for almost five hours.  Neither of us have exactly been doing upper body work-outs lately.  We are planning on judicious use of naproxen for a day or two after we are done.

The map image above shows our course through the Chihuahuan Desert.  A little less than five miles of river with a couple of named rapids and water levels that varied between a bucolic float and getting out and dragging the canoe over inch-deep shallows.

Below is a slide show of the paddle trip.  The pictures consist mostly of the parts of the river when we were gently floating.  I had my hands pretty full in the rapids and shallows, the camera laid in the bottom of the canoe in its waterproof bag until I could afford to loose my grip on the paddle.

The first few slides are of us getting afloat and organized.  Then you will see us pulling up to a hot spring.  This one is not on any maps or advertised in any brochures.  It bubbles up right on the edge of the river and runs +/- 100F.  Several in the group took the opportunity to get in and take a dunk.  It was plenty hot enough outside, Cyndee and I passed on getting in the hot water.

The next place you see us out of the canoes was for a lunch stop at Hot Springs.  This one is on the map and in brochures and has a road to it.  There are buildings there from just after the turn of the century.  At one time it was quite the little operation with a motor lodge, store, post office and a "spa" built over the top of the hot spring.  The spa building has long since been razed and the remaining structures are just shells.  But the hot spring is percolating right along as it has done for more than a century (probably several centuries).  Steadily flowing it delivers 105F water to the foundation of the old spa building that now serves as a shallow pool, replete with silt and a thick algae mat. 

Not sure of the date of this picture but it is from years past.  The river cane is so thick now that you can barely see the spring from the trail.  And you can not see the river at all down the entire 1/4 mile walk from the old "resort".

But you can see from the picture above that people still get right in.  You can also see the river just outside the pool is a rapid at this point.  That is why I am using someone else's photo.  This is one of those places I had my hands a little too busy to be snapping pictures.  It is also the place where Cyndee and I hit a large boulder head-on and the back of the canoe decided it wanted to be the front of the canoe.  We finished out the rapid backwards.  But give us credit, we did not dump.  Kept our cool and upright, the only thing damaged was our dignity.

Enjoy the slide show: