The wildlife

I think I expected to see more wildlife given the terrain that we covered, but my recollections were that we saw very little in general.

Of course, just because we didn't SEE a lot doesn't mean that it wasn't there. It was noted that there were several sets of tracks that converged on my sleeping area the second night. Probably a large family of ringtails trying to decide if I would make good eating.

There were a few sightings along the way.

Wild Burros -- I mentioned this previously, but when Burros were brought into the old west, they often out lasted the miners who brought them in and there are several groups (herds ?) of them in the Arizona desert.

Ringtail -- Okay so we only saw a dead ringtail, but it did follow our raft down the river the first day and lead to pleas from DeAnna to just "go away" and the great fear that he had gotten stuck under our raft.

Blue Heron aka Terradactal -- This is one of those birds that you just hope isn't carnivorous because it could carry a small child away. Really amazing looking.

Some red tip hawks ?

Red spotted toads -- For those of you who have ever read Louis L'Amour books, he likes to use the Red Spotted toad to help his characters lost in the desert know that they are near water (he did this in at least one short story and one novel I believe). Sure enough, we stopped one day to walk up this little tributary that fed into the river and the place was covered with them. They are only the size of a half dollar or so at most.

Some sort of fish -- okay someone help me out with the type of fish we saw on this same tributary. It was funny because when I first saw how many of the toads there were, I was thinking. Man, these toads need a predator. Then I saw how fat these fish were and I figured that they didn't get that big just eating mosquitos.

But the best nature sighting for my money was the duck.

As we were getting close to the end of the river portion of our trip and nearing the lake portion of the trip, we had switched over to using a motor and having all three rafts lashed together.

Out of nowhere there appears this adult duck that is going crazy. It looks hurt and and its cutting in front of us to the left and then to the right.

When we first saw it, the women on the boat were like "Oh the poor thing" and everyone was like "Oh, it's hurt", "Oh, it's confused", "Oh, it's psycho". Then someone else suggested that maybe it was just faking. Trying to lead us away from its nest as if we were some predator after its young.

And sure enough, a few minutes later, it "miraculously" was healed and it flew away in a wide semi-circle off to our left.