Anyway, back to Day 15 with my best friend and love of my life. First thing we did was pack up our stuff and carry it next door to a real hotel. We escaped the motel from hell and I won't go into details on how nasty that place was! And if there had been another room open somewhere else for that night we would have left in a heart beat, but unfortunately everyone was booked full.
Once on the road we went to a museum an interpretative center on the river. We met a very nice lady carrying a 6 year old female Red Tailed Hawk and she stopped to talk to us and allowed us to take pics of the majestic bird. For anyone that knows me, you know how much I love Red Tailed Hawks (my first motorcycle was named Red Tail and I had a custom Red Tailed Hawk embroidered onto the back of my motorcycles vest). So this was a thrill for me! Once the lady realized how much I loved the bird, she had Kevin take pics of me and the hawk. Boy, what I would have given to have been able to hold the hawk! I can't describe how beautiful she was! She had an injured wing and could only fly a short distance, she luckily is in a great place and will live her life out being pampered from what I could see. Normal lifespan we were told was approximately 15 years, but longer if in captivity and well taken care of - this hawk will live out a long life I'm sure.
On to the waterfalls! Bad timing on our part - weekend weather was perfect and several other thousand people had the same idea as we did - "Let's go to the waterfalls!" Kinda rude of them since we had traveled over 3,000 miles for this. LOL. We hit all of the waterfalls except for the one where you have to travel in waist high water (chest high for the little Ranger who was shorter than me) for 1/8 of a mile to get to the falls, and that is where there had to have been over 300 cars parked, we said "Thanks, but no thanks" and went on to the next fall.
It was a full day of waterfalls and of course I can't do something without having a mishap. On the last fall I got adventurous and went up behind it. The going up was easy! The going down ended up being easy after I slipped in the mud and slid down the rocky hillside on my hind end. To get the mud off, I sat in the middle of the stream of icy cold water to wash it all off. It actually felt good since temps by then had climbed up into the 90's. Luckily my camera wasn't injured, only my pride.
Coming back to the hotel we stopped to fill up and get me a 5 hour energy, which I was able to limp "home" on. Off to dinner we went to The Baldwin Saloon where I again had a great meal, while poor Kevin struggled to cut his prime rib. The prime rib had a wonderful flavor to it, once he was able to cut it into bite sized portions. After dinner we had the great idea of moseying up to the bar and asking for a shot of whiskey (like in the movies when they go into a saloon). And once again, we knew no strangers. The bartender and a fellow siting next to Kevin gave us all kinds of places to go and see on our next leg of the trip. After conversing with these two for over an hour and sipping on our one shot of local rot gut, we walked back to the motel where I proceeded to go into a exhaustion induced coma. Not sure how quickly Kevin followed me into that same state because a bomb could have gone off without me knowing.
Mileage today was a measly 139. I'm sure Day 16 will make up for our poor performance in that category. And to answer your question JP - Yes, there were LOTS of windsurfers out on the river! From the lookout where we saw them we thought they were sailboats but we were corrected by a couple of locals up there.
Onward and Westward!
No comments:
Post a Comment