Mary Panttaja

Yesterday, the 31st, we executed one of our favorite loops: a 12 mile paddle on the Snake River between Pacific Creek and Deadman’s Bar and a 11 mile bike ride back to the car. Easy on both legs (pun intended) as the river is basically flat, though fast, and the only hazard on the bike ride is wind.

This section of the Snake doesn’t host the large commercial raft operations, they put in at Deadman’s Bar, so we shared the river with only a few small drift boats (mostly folks being taught how to fly fish, but at the time of day when no fish would deign to be caught) and two men in an aluminum canoe. We were able to paddle away from them all and have our section of the river mostly to ourselves.

A generous sprinkling of wildlife:

• The usual steadfast fisherman of the river, ospreys.
• Three bald eagle sightings; one soaring out of a tree on the bank, one standing on a sandbar wrestling with a small fish, and the third dive bombing in on the second to steal lunch. They were all mature, the white of the heads and tails very stark in the even blues, greens, and greys of the river.
• A variety of ducks, geese, and mergansers including babies.
• A pair of cranes feeding in the grass along the refuge.
• A small herd of antelope that fluttered back into the trees, a few stopping to look back and stare at us.
• An elk in the distance grazing.
• A medium size herd of bison, looking for all the world like cattle grazing out on a ranch.
• A few pronghorn, one of the more unique creatures of Wyoming.

Today we are headed south. We just passed an early section of the Green River, which we will, more or less, be following down to it’s confluence with the Colorado near Moab. It will take us a few days to get there. Tonight we may camp near the confluence of the Green and the Yampa (northwestern Colorado) near Dinosaur National Monument. And maybe another paddle/peddle tour, this time on the Green.