Water, friend or foe?

At a certain point on the road, things get turned upside down and the complicated becomes simple while the simple becomes slippery and elusive.  This portion of the blog will be titled, "WATER".  There will be chapters to better allow me to describe the distress caused by the lack of, keeping of and attaining of water.

Jugs

You are headed in to a canyon for days at a time where there is probably limited to no access to water.  You must stock up on water, and your 17 different sized, colored and decorated Nalgenes aren't going to cut it.  Two 5-gallon, collapsable, beautiful, blue water jugs are purchased.

What you don't see coming...is when two weeks in to your month-long trip, your beautiful, blue, water gallon begins deceiving you, leaking all over your car and quietly depriving you of your hard-earned water.  

Duct tape, shoe goo, positioning and towels were all tools of desperation
in trying to keep our water safe.

We fought to hold on.  We rationed our water.  We stored dirty dishes.  We begged the dogs to "finish your water!" so no drop was left behind.  We teetered on the brink of dehydration and now, they will be returned today, tantrum included.

Pumping

It becomes apparent that pumping water from a well in Ten Sleep, Wyoming is a cushy situation.  You drive to designated water pump tucked away in the beautiful canyon landscape.  You team up to pump and carry, pump and carry.  You accept it as a warm-up (or cool down) for the core to upper body parts.  Water is always just one, beautiful, old road away.  

In Maple Canyon, things changed.  Water was just slightly out of reach.  We would have to drive 25 minutes out of the canyon to the nearest town, Fountain Green, to refill our failing water jugs.  I felt slightly criminalistic as I slinked around the side of a closed gas station, in the dark, unscrewed a hose, and battled with a hand-pump to acquire our water.  (This was approved as a decent and acceptable activity by said gas station attendants previously in the week.)  We waged constant battle with keeping enough water for three people and two dogs who were hiking, climbing and sweating it out.

Showers

Showers.  Showers become this on-going joke.  You take pride in your ability to feel comfortably dirty.  You bathe in cold, mountain streams to the sounds of nature...and your companions shrieking and sucking in desperate breaths of air upon surfacing.  You use baby wipes on lazy days.  You point and laugh at each others discoloration.  

Then, all of a sudden, you are in a place where there are no mountain streams.  Just dirt.  Loose, flying in the air, sticking to your face, dirt.  The lack of showers slowly becomes less funny.  You become overjoyed at the finding of a small pipe spitting out one shockingly cold spout of water by your campsite.  You find yourself "splash-bathing" in the 6 inches of icy water.  

Then finally, 2.5 weeks later, the lack of a shower becomes unbearable.  You drive to a truck stop and pay the kind lady $10.00 to take a shower with all the other "professional drivers" on the road.  It really was quite nice.  I believe I was given the opportunity to jam to "Wild World" while taking my sweet $10.oo worth of time.

Flying J shower time

Rain

Opposite problem.  No water!  Keep the water OUT!  It rained something like 4 out of 5 nights at the start of our road trip.  Rain shells, tarps, running to the car.  We reversed our energy to avoid water at all costs.  Wet dogs (and wet people and their wet things) do not improve the interior of a tent or a Chevy Malibu.

A wet and shell-ed Meghan

Hydrate

Finally, we need water to drink.  But just when you expend all this energy to find water, pump water, carry water, bathe in water, and ration water...  suddenly it just seems easier to drink wine.

Or beer, if you're Derek.