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camping
November 2009 
I'm Back and Ready after Rio
Posted on Jan 15th, 2007
by 
Peter
Peter
I'm all the way on the right. There are so many great pictures from the trip, so check out my photos in the future for some great nature shots
Finally I'm back. I took a long break from blogging and internet usage in general this Christmas break. Yesterday I got back to Austin and I'm very excited about this year. First things first though.
In my last post I spoke of possibly going on two awesome trips. Well, I went on one. Seven guys and I canoed the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande, an 84 mile stretch that is said to be one of the most beautiful sections of the river. We all went to the same high school, and we were all the Chaco (I'm Z1 all the way) wearing type. Our ages ranged from 19 to 23. We planned for 7 days on the river. We refilled our water at hot springs and went through the rapids with all or most gear. 3 in our group had canoed the Rio Grande at least twice, and two of the guys had recently been river guides around the US, so I felt like we were in good hands.
We made it back safely, suffering only minor set backs. Each of us fell out of the canoe or crashed/flipped at least once, and we did lose some gear on the Lower Madison rapids. However, for all the risks we took (lots of whiskey on the river), we did quite well. The weather was excellent 2/3 of the time. On our second to last night, it started raining as we slept. Instead of doing the prudent thing and assembling our tents (which were wet) we just migrated to less wet areas under bamboo. We woke up the next morning with the rain still drearily coming down. Most of our stuff was wet, we were cold, but spirits continued to be high. We ended up having to paddle the last 17 miles in the rain, with about 40 degree temperature, because we didn't want to camp another night in the rain. Although it was quite unpleasant the whole day, we made it and it makes for a better story. We had some interesting episodes during the journey.
On our way to the border, we hit an 8 pt. deer and killed it. Luckily we were going fast enough and were in my mom's V8 Expedition, so it only sustained minor damage. We had some hunters in the group, and so one of my friends quickly carved out its backstrap which made for a delicious first meal (it's better than letting it's body rot, isn't it?). Another interesting episode was on the 3rd night of camping. We were situated on a very flat and open area, and most of us slept near the fire. We woke up to the hee-haw of a wild donkey dozens of feet from us. We scared it off, but what a noise to wake up to! Another great part of the trip was all the cool games (aka drinking games) we made up. My favorite was Tequila Football (but the taste of tequila is revolting!). The canoe with the handle of Tequila (we played with other liquors too) would get behind the others, and "hike" it while they paddled to "get open." The QB would chunk the bottle and whoever recovered had to drink and become the QB. You have to play to see how exciting the game can be. Anyways, one more story before I sign off. So after we paddle for 4+ hours in the rain, we arrive at our take-out and have to lug our canoes and gear up muddy hills. We load up the trailer, change clothes, and hit the road. Everything's great but we realize that we are dangerously low on gas. (Background: The most expensive part of the trip was the 500+ dollars to pay someone to shuttle our vehicle from our put in at La Linda to our take out at Dryden Crossing. Even though we spent all that money, our driver didn't feel the need to give us enough gas to get to a fueling station.) So, we're driving in the middle of nowhere, trying to get to Del Rio, and we end up pulling into a closed or broken down gas station in some ghost town far away from any place that could help us. Great. It's dark and there's no people for miles and miles. What do we do? Luckily one of us was a AAA member, so we call them and wait. We sit in the dark in the middle of nowhere for about 2 hours until some kind folk from AAA came and bailed us out. What a trip! It was excellent...providing a spectrum of different kinds of valuable experiences.
It is good (I would argue essential) to get out in mother nature, especially in the wilderness, every now and then. The beauty and majesty of nature continously opens itself to your imagination while camping or roaming the great outdoors. Spending all day and night in concrete boxes on concrete streets breeds a forgetfullness that results in environmental degradation and destruction of many kinds. Society can hardly face the simplicity and silence of mother nature, a very unhealthy sign. So go outside and soak up the sun or rain!
Back to blogging! Much love and peace to the earth and all.
Finally I'm back. I took a long break from blogging and internet usage in general this Christmas break. Yesterday I got back to Austin and I'm very excited about this year. First things first though.
In my last post I spoke of possibly going on two awesome trips. Well, I went on one. Seven guys and I canoed the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande, an 84 mile stretch that is said to be one of the most beautiful sections of the river. We all went to the same high school, and we were all the Chaco (I'm Z1 all the way) wearing type. Our ages ranged from 19 to 23. We planned for 7 days on the river. We refilled our water at hot springs and went through the rapids with all or most gear. 3 in our group had canoed the Rio Grande at least twice, and two of the guys had recently been river guides around the US, so I felt like we were in good hands.
We made it back safely, suffering only minor set backs. Each of us fell out of the canoe or crashed/flipped at least once, and we did lose some gear on the Lower Madison rapids. However, for all the risks we took (lots of whiskey on the river), we did quite well. The weather was excellent 2/3 of the time. On our second to last night, it started raining as we slept. Instead of doing the prudent thing and assembling our tents (which were wet) we just migrated to less wet areas under bamboo. We woke up the next morning with the rain still drearily coming down. Most of our stuff was wet, we were cold, but spirits continued to be high. We ended up having to paddle the last 17 miles in the rain, with about 40 degree temperature, because we didn't want to camp another night in the rain. Although it was quite unpleasant the whole day, we made it and it makes for a better story. We had some interesting episodes during the journey.
On our way to the border, we hit an 8 pt. deer and killed it. Luckily we were going fast enough and were in my mom's V8 Expedition, so it only sustained minor damage. We had some hunters in the group, and so one of my friends quickly carved out its backstrap which made for a delicious first meal (it's better than letting it's body rot, isn't it?). Another interesting episode was on the 3rd night of camping. We were situated on a very flat and open area, and most of us slept near the fire. We woke up to the hee-haw of a wild donkey dozens of feet from us. We scared it off, but what a noise to wake up to! Another great part of the trip was all the cool games (aka drinking games) we made up. My favorite was Tequila Football (but the taste of tequila is revolting!). The canoe with the handle of Tequila (we played with other liquors too) would get behind the others, and "hike" it while they paddled to "get open." The QB would chunk the bottle and whoever recovered had to drink and become the QB. You have to play to see how exciting the game can be. Anyways, one more story before I sign off. So after we paddle for 4+ hours in the rain, we arrive at our take-out and have to lug our canoes and gear up muddy hills. We load up the trailer, change clothes, and hit the road. Everything's great but we realize that we are dangerously low on gas. (Background: The most expensive part of the trip was the 500+ dollars to pay someone to shuttle our vehicle from our put in at La Linda to our take out at Dryden Crossing. Even though we spent all that money, our driver didn't feel the need to give us enough gas to get to a fueling station.) So, we're driving in the middle of nowhere, trying to get to Del Rio, and we end up pulling into a closed or broken down gas station in some ghost town far away from any place that could help us. Great. It's dark and there's no people for miles and miles. What do we do? Luckily one of us was a AAA member, so we call them and wait. We sit in the dark in the middle of nowhere for about 2 hours until some kind folk from AAA came and bailed us out. What a trip! It was excellent...providing a spectrum of different kinds of valuable experiences.
It is good (I would argue essential) to get out in mother nature, especially in the wilderness, every now and then. The beauty and majesty of nature continously opens itself to your imagination while camping or roaming the great outdoors. Spending all day and night in concrete boxes on concrete streets breeds a forgetfullness that results in environmental degradation and destruction of many kinds. Society can hardly face the simplicity and silence of mother nature, a very unhealthy sign. So go outside and soak up the sun or rain!
Back to blogging! Much love and peace to the earth and all.
Access: PublicTagged with: Rio Grande, Lower Canyons, Chaco, canoeing, camping, deer, la linda, dryden crossing, nature
What a great adventure you had! Thank you for sharing. Great post.
Samme
Jeez, that really reminds me of the spirit of our group who did two self-supported trips on tthe lower canyons in 1978 and 1979 with groups of 15 to 18 people. The second year the memorable engineering feat was to keep the beer cold til the sixth day. The tequilla was a resident evil as well. We did our trips in Februrary and it was still HOT!! We travelled from Dallas (where most of us were in medical school) for hours to get to the put in site and the killer shuttle.
Congrats. Great post to bring back the memories.
tom