OCR Text |
Show Record desired to study the geology of the banks. I do not remember whether we kept as close to the banks as we could. We concerned ourselves with the channel only so far as it would help us to get along in our boat. The two trips I have mentioned were the only trips I have made on the river. We took some soundings with an car on the straight stretches where experience a little further up show-ed us the water was liable to be shallow. We kept our motor going as we proceeded down the river except when grounded. We would get out of the river in order to collect fossils or make a close in- 1330 spection of the geology on either side of the river several times a day. It would not be as many as 15 or 20. For instance, at the slide, we spent all day there and camped the night before. The trip I took to the Indian Creek oil well was to an oil well that was several miles inland from the river. The load we carried in our boat, exclusive of ourselves, weighed about 375 pounds. The draft of the boat when loaded was about 2 feet. 1332 With my lack of experience on the river I could not tell where the channel was. There was nothing that enabled me to locate the channel in the straight stretches so that in the straight stretch I simply went down stream. On the curves we had no trouble. I have had no experience with motor boats on other streams, on the ocean only. This was my first experience with a motor boat on any 1333 stream. I don't wish to be understood as saying that I had serious difficulty in going up and down the Colorado River, except we were aground a great deal in a shallow draft boat. When we came aground we endeavored to shove off into deeper water. We succeeded in doing so in all instances but at times we had to push the boat several hundred feet, zigzag it across the stream and back and straight ahead to get into deep water. That was in the straight stretches. Now in all probability had we been familiar with the channel we could have avoided a great deal of that trouble. - 175- |