It's called Devil's Elbow, and my friend from Iowa saw a photo of it once and declared that it was her favorite place on Earth. It was neat to show it to her in person. She loved it.
We pulled the boat over to a small beach, hiked up the rocks, and watched the people float by on their boats. It was comical, because the sound of their voices carried up the rock walls so well. We could hear every word, see everything they were doing. One small boat was full of young partiers (we assume they were young) and we watched them jump around, dancing on the deck. Occasionally someone would hop in the water and we'd see them drift away with the current. Eventually the party boat had to run over and rescue their swimmers.
The way the water reflects the blue of the sky is just gorgeous. I really love the upriver area, with its clean cold water and beautiful views.
We mosied up near Topock and Pirate's Cove to check out the beaches, usually traveling 70 mph or so.
We were surprised by a train overhead at the I-40 crossing, and it was really creepy to be underneath the bridge as it went over.
Watched the local kids playing around under the train bridge:
They had a rope and were swinging around over the water. It's deep, fast moving water right there so they're nuts!! I spotted one or two kids who had climbed way up underneath the train tracks. They were sitting with their legs dangling off the steel beams.
We went further north and beached on the Arizona side of the river.
I've always wanted to poke around up on that side to see if there's any ruins. Old mining camps used to exist there, over 100 years ago. All I could find were rocks and mud.
While we walked hand in hand along the beach, we found a disturbing site. Couldn't figure out what we were seeing, either!!
We saw these periodically along the shore and we were too scared to touch them.
Finally, we found one in the final stages of whatever it was doing:
Aaah, okay! It's dragonflies who are molting!! Apparently they are larvae in the river, and when it's time they crawl up into the sand and go thru their changes.
We learned a lot.
We also discovered the crawdads. Crawdads! Oh okay, I'm sure you're thinking of something else...Crayfish. Whatever...
There were a few of those, and I was happy to get them back to the water where they could scurry away.
We took our time going downstream to get home, taking in the beautiful scenery. The number of boats on the water had decreased to almost none, so it was quiet and peaceful. Instead of racing past the red rocks and dry waterfalls, we drifted past them slowly and admired them.
And of course we dreamed of how we could get a four wheeled vehicle to certain locations so we could possibly look for gold....
