2000-06-26 Antelope Island to Reflection Canyon 2000-06-27 Reflection Canyon 2000-06-28 Reflection Canyon to Dungeon Canyon 2000-06-29 Dungeon Canyon to Labyrinth Canyon 2000-06-30 Labyrinth Canyon to Wahweap 2000-07-01 Dam Tour

Day 5 - Thursday, June 29, 2000

We spent a good chunk of Thursday motoring down the lake to Labyrinth Canyon, which snakes away from the south shore of Padre Bay at mile 16.  Labyrinth lives up to its name:  like Reflection canyon, it is long, narrow, winding, and ... well ... labyrinthine.  Roger knew of a good anchorage in the main part of the canyon, but it was unfortunately already taken.  So were our second and third choices.  We scratched our heads for a bit before finally settling on a little inlet in a side canyon that juts out to the west of Labyrinth.  Roger wasn't thrilled with this anchorage, primarily because there was no real beach.  We were only able to get one pontoon up onto the sand, and the other floated out in the water.  This necessitated extra care when tying down the four anchors.  Normally, one would run these out at an angle from the boat and bury them in wet sand on the beach, but there simply wasn't enough beach in this case.  We had some sand under the starboard bow, but the port bow was floating free with nothing but a rock wall to the side of it.  A low, rocky ridge ran along the starboard side, affording little in the way of anchorage points.  Ultimately, we were able to bury two anchors and tie off a third to a rock.  Robert then tied off the starboard stern to a tamarisk (salt cedar) bush, insisting that it would hold.

I went on a hike up onto another ridge to the west of our boat while Robert and Ginger feverishly debated the tensile strength of tamarisk branches.  If there were a calculator and a ruler on the boat, I'm certain that both of them would have been pulled out by now.  I didn't get very far away from the boat before another canyon blocked my progress, and an approaching storm on the horizon made turning around seem like a pretty good idea.  By the time I was back at the boat, the winds had started picking up, as had the debate over the Tree of Contention.  We ultimately decided to take the fourth anchor, run it over the rocky ridge, and bury it in the wet sand on the other side.  The winds picked up more, gusting to gale force and threatening to blow the boat against the rock wall.  The anchors held, and the winds had died down somewhat by evening, but they continued to gust for most of the night.  The aluminum travel trailer on pontoons made a pretty good sail, and the tossing about and creaking of ropes made it difficult to sleep.