As you can imagine, that kind of electricity requires quite a bit of hydropower, and the dam's water release is measured in tens of thousands of cubic feet of water per second. Per second. It's staggering to think about, particularly as you pilot a boat directly against it.
I'm making a good show, but in my mind I was still questioning the wisdom of putting three small kids in this bathtub skating along enough power to light the Las Vegas Strip, Chase Stadium, and the homes of five million people. Mostly I was just happy that Dean had borrowed pro-level life jackets for all of us. It doesn't look like much in a photo, but it's easy to underestimate the force of the Colorado. People die in it every year.
The campsite we were hoping to stay at was right at the bottom of Horseshoe Bend, the site captured in a thousand classic Southwest photos where the Colorado River nearly doubles back on itself.
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| Carsten Tolkmit [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] |
Aimee and Jill would be arriving at Lee's Ferry in about 30-45 minutes, so Dean got back on the boat to pick them up while I started to set up camp with Otto. We climbed up on an overlook to wave Dean off, but I did not like what I saw. Well outside of shouting distance, we saw Dean standing up on the boat, pulling on the motor start cord. He had lost power, and was drifting in the Colorado. Otto and I scrambled up higher on the overlook to get a better view, and when we caught our next glimpse of Dean, he was drifting backwards, oars out, towards the canyon wall. Not good.
Unsure if I'd ever see my friend, or modern civilization again, I took Otto back to the campsite so at least one of the Knuth men would be safely returned to Jill at some point. And to make matters worse, on top of our gear pile, we saw Dean's lifejacket just sitting there, taunting us. Not good. Not good at all.
I tried to mask my distress, but I'm sure Otto knew on some level that I was worried. I scanned the river line for other boaters that I could recruit to rescue Dean, and turned my cell phone on to see if we were close enough to Page to pick up a signal from one of their cell towers. It turns out that the far corner of our campsite was, and I was able to get off a text to Jill to at least plant the seed that something was wrong, without terrifying her.
Meanwhile, Aimee and Jill made absolutely the right decision to keep the kids busy at a little beach along the Colorado near Lee's Ferry.
Those kids. I know.
Miraculously, after I had given up much hope of this vacation continuing as planned, Dean managed to motor back to camp about 20 minutes later. By that point, I figured--at a minimum--Otto and I would be spending the day at camp alone, since Dean would need to swap out the boat back at Marble Canyon. I was mostly sure Dean himself would be fine, since there were no rapids on this stretch of the Colorado, and the current would eventually bring Dean back to Lee's Ferry. The lifejacket issue made me a little nervous, but I tried to put that thought out of my head.
But when Dean made it back to camp in one piece, I knew we could figure this out. It turned out that the gear selector lever on the motor handle had gotten loose, so Dean couldn't put the motor into drive. The motor itself was running fine, and he was able to get small burst of power out of it every now and then to make it back to camp.
So we tinkered with the cables for a bit and were able to re-engage the transmission. With the boat now running at full speed (and Dean's lifejacket back where it belonged), we were able to pick up the rest of our group. Otto, now not wanting to let his dad out of his sight, elected to make the boat ride back to Lee's Ferry with Dean. And I wasn't too broken up about his decision, exhausted after keeping someone else's kid alive for a whopping thirty minutes.
I may or may not have fallen asleep after setting up our camp chairs (at least I got a bit of our site ready), and awaited the rest of the gang.
Two hours later, I heard the put-put of our boat's outboard engine, and quickly popped out of the chair and pretended I wasn't asleep the entire time they were gone.
I looked down river, and saw the right amount of people on the boat. They had made it!
And it turns out that my fears of four kids bouncing around/out of the boat were misplaced. Every single one of them fell asleep within minutes of leaving Lee's Ferry.
Look closely.
And even before they fell asleep, the boat ride was apparently pretty pleasant. The novelty of the situation kept the kids pretty entertained.
Mimi in her natural state: Outdoors with a book, a smile, and a mouthful of food.
We spent the next hour or so setting up camp while the kids played on the beach.
Quinn, completely unaware that not every baby's first camping trip gets to be at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Oh good, Dean remembered to pack the Smirnoff Ice.
This was a long running gag that often resulted in me muttering some curse as I stumbled across a cleverly hidden bottle of Smirnoff Ice, and then barely stomaching the taste of cheap liquor masked with a hell of a lot of sugar.
And just like that, every worry about weather, overboard toddlers, and not bringing enough beer was out the window. We had arrived.
