THURSDAY: This morning, we got up and did a final assessment on our river-running situation. Our tally was not impressive, to say the least. Risk:Reward ratio seems to be far below threshold.

• Green River is running 6 feet over flood stage. Center of river is running in excess of 10 mph. Submerged/hidden objects cause whirlpool effects at arbitrary points in the flow. We see the river flowing vigorously over the legs of river-side park benches. A downstream weir, normally five feet out of the water, is nearly submerged. Nobody knows how the weir current works at this rate, and we are advised to make a portage there. Unfortunately, that is where the current is most aggressive, all the way to the banks of the river.
• Our expertise is virtually nil. We have not had the kayak on the water in 20 months and have no recent practice of any kind. We don’t even know whether we can successfully beach the kayak against the fierce currents.
• Nobody is on the water. Yeah, it’s a weekday, but school is out, and there are NO kayakers or rafters out on the river. What do they know that we don’t?
• The scenery is dull to poor. We’re not looking at an idyllic float down towering sandstone canyons. Here, the river just shoots past some industrial areas and passes through town. There’s no big bonanza waiting for us at a hidden turn.

In short, we could get in a lot of trouble making this float. There is one bridge that is so close over the water that we would be thwacked and dumped if we couldn’t beach the kayak before reaching it. There are un-seen, and un-seeable rocks, snags, and obstacles (concealed by the high water) that could damage the kayak or even ourselves. Even if we could see bad stuff, the speed of the current might prevent us from avoiding it. And on top of all the risks, our biggest reward for the overall attempt would be simply to survive it. After not too much skull-scratching, we decided to cancel.

Given the “extra day”, we decided that getting over closer to home would be a good thing. That way, we’d still have time to dally where we liked. The northern part of Utah is fairly populated, what with SLC and Provo, and we were not tempted to spend time  there on this trip, exploring in national forests which would likely be crowded with families out for a Father’s Day weekend jaunt. So we simply blasted off for Nevada (380 miles away), thinking that out in the far reaches of no-man’s-land we’d find fewer crowds. Maybe.

As we left our RV park for places south-west, we saw this rig at the end of the campground. It’s a houseboat, sort of. But it has a planing hull and a big Merc out-drive, with a ski-rope hook on the back. So this guy can camp in an RV park, or out in the boondocks, or on a lake or river, and go water-skiing when the notion strikes him. Pretty interesting flexibility.

As we set out on the road, Wyoming’s winds continued to attack us with a vengeance. Incessant quartering headwinds provided both the side-sway of crosswinds and the power-robbing drag of headwinds. We bucked and heaved down the highway at 2/3 of our normal fuel economy. Those five miles per gallon translated to $0.70 per mile traveled.

Taking the Provo River canyon cutoff, we zipped past the population centers of Utah, but not without some appreciation of the grand scenery enroute. The mud-grey layered cliffs outside of Provo got snap-shotted through Howie’s windshield as we headed down I-15 and then US6 toward Delta.

A little later, we passed through the town of Eureka (Utah). It looked a lot like a ghost town, but it was much better kept. It was also covered everywhere with a uniform coating of grey rock/gravel. Karin read up on it, and it turns out that Eureka was a functioning mining town until the EPA discovered heavy lead contamination. The town had to literally bury itself in rock, and is apparently subject to clean-up requirements before mining operations can resume. It’s pretty striking driving through, because the entire landscape is just this massive covering of grey rock.

When we finally reached Great Basin National Park, our expectation of an easy camp site were not met. Previously, we came here off-season, and the place was pretty much ours for the choosing. This time, maybe due to Father’s Day weekend up-coming, most of the campsites were taken, and ALL of the Howie-sized sites were used up. Kinda annoying to see a Fiat parked on an 80-foot-long pull-through camp site, but the rules are first-come, first-served and that’s the sum of it.

We at last found a decent spot down in “overflow camping”. In fact, we (again) had the whole 25-site loop to ourselves. We backed Howie into place, leveled out, and settled in. The Grey Cliffs loomed in the twilight off to our left; the sun had long since dropped below Wheeler Peak to the west.