The Colorado River

The Colorado River while I was growing up in California from age 4 on was always the closest biggest river near to us and I always felt it was sort of our River, because big rivers don't exist much in southern California other than the Colorado. As a child I went and waded in the river while we were on our way to Arizona or New Mexico in the 1950s. I also waded and swam in the Salton Sea which was an engineering accident while water was being canaled in the early 1900s to the Los Angeles Basin by diverting part of the Colorado River.

But riding the Zephyr Train east I found it wonderful and amazing to follow the Colorado river for many many miles in Colorado up towards the Continental divide in the Rockies. I could imagine all the horses and men building the railroad back in the 1860s getting water from the river to keep on going as the camped nearby along those hundreds of miles. So, it is really beautiful to see the country by train because in some ways it is like it was in the 1860s before cars and trucks most of the way along. Though sometimes you parallel roadways with cars and trucks a lot of the time you don't and then you can see cattle, wild areas and miles and miles of mostly nothing along the way. A few times you see cities and settlements but it is really amazing through Nevada, parts of Utah and Colorado how much open undeveloped space there really is.

Next, a few days later I found my son and I going on our way back to California in his car visiting the Grand Canyon (which was cut over millions of years by the Colorado rive). This started to make me think and I realized that we would intersect on this trip a total of three times with the Colorado River. I sort of realized that this trip was going to be a lot about the Colorado River, from its headwaters that I saw along the train coming from the Continental divide heading westwards to the Grand Canyon that it had cut, to crossing the river into California at Needles to even being California's Eastern most border itself and then it flows on down into Mexico and into the Gulf of California next to Baja California in Mexico there.

So, after seeeing the Colorado River Headwaters in the Rockies and Visiting the Grand Canyon I found myself wading in the Colorado River in over 60 degrees air temperature while boy scouts landed their 5 or 6 boats that they were going down the Colorado river on there in Needles, California. I was amazed at how I felt about the spirit of this mighty River and Glad to be a Californian who was free and could travel to see this amazing country and amazing river!