On The Road – cope – Grand Junction and Beyond, Part VI

We put in at Riverbend Park in Pallisade, a few miles upstream from Grand Junction. My brother-in-law owns the raft above and the blue inflatable kayak know as a “duckie” was borrowed from a friend. A yellow duckie belonging to one of my brothers was the third vessel of our flotilla. Besides myself, the cast of characters included both my brothers, my brother-in-law and my grandson.

Here, one of my brothers and my grandson float along behind the three of us on the raft. The yellow duckie had been in storage for a period of time equal to or greater than twenty years. It did not hold air as well as one might like while trying to enjoy a leisurely float

My other brother started out in the raft with me and my brother-in-law. This is a view back upstream with another party and Grand Mesa in the background.

This is the one of the few bits of faster water we got to negotiate. You can see the yellow duckie starting to sag in the middle as air leaks out. My brother did appreciate the cooling balm of the river water, though.

Our daughter’s family owns a couple of kayaks and have used them quite a bit here in central Florida so my grandson felt pretty comfortable. 

Here he is going through one of the riffles we enjoyed on the trip. The view is upstream toward the northeast and you can see The Book Cliffs on the left and cumulus building up over the mountains.

In this shot, Mt. Garfield of The Book Cliffs takes center stage. One thing I will appreciate about living in Grand Junction is the presence of physical landmarks. Mt. Garfield, The Book Cliffs, The Mesa, The Monument, one or more is almost always in view wherever you are in the valley. For me, it gives a physical sense of direction and connection to the land and feeling of being in a particular place.

To give a sense of how unthreatening the river was, this is a group of folks on paddle boards and the board on the right has a rather large dog standing on it. The Monument is the dark, thin strip that marks the lowest most horizon.

At this point, my brothers had switched places in the raft and yellow duckie. Again, The Mesa anchors the horizon, cumulus clouds building over the higher elevations while we sweated in the Sun down on the river.

We stopped for lunch about half way through our trip but I thought this would make a good image to end the post. As I learned in March of 1969 on a college raft trip through the Grand Canyon to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Powell’s epic first journey, food is an important part of any venture on the river. This repast didn’t quite do justice to the food gods but it sure tasted good. We pulled out at Las Colonias Park just above the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers.

I hope others have enjoyed these picture stories because I sure had fun putting them together. Who knows what adventures await once we move back to Junction?