The Snake River

July 8

Today we got to the jet boat dock at 7:30 not sure what to expect.  It turned out to be great.  We went 95 miles up the river to the point where it is the deepest gorge in America.  About 75% of the time it was like going up the Obey River on the jet ski.  Merry & Dale and Lanny & Donna can relate to this.  Smooth as silk just like you are flying over the water.  The other 25% was a lot like the New River which Lanny & Donna can relate to.   The only thing missing was my party hat and Miss West Virginia threatening me with death if I paddled wrong!  We had a beautiful day to cruise the river.

Leaving the dock.

A little shack on the river!

Entering Hell's Canyon

This is the Earl Ranch built in 1894.  It is on the side of the river with no road.

So they row across the river to their garage and go to town.  Members of the original family still live on the farm.  One of them drove the mail boat for years.

This rock is from the bottom of a sea.  It is full of marine fossils.  Geologists say it came from the area around Mexico when the earth's plates were shifting.  They have also found petrified teak wood and other woods from that region in caves along the river.

There is a small area where there are a few homes where there are no roads.  All the building materials for these homes was brought in by boat or helicopter.

I loved all the little beaches tucked in with the rocks.

There are 3 large cattle ranches left along the river.  A guy from Texas came and bought one for $11 million.  He is worth 30 billion dollars and needed to spend some money for tax purposes.  His brother bought the second one.

 

This was our lunch stop.  As you can see you needed to be a goat to get up there.  Nice place.

 

 

We saw deer and rocky mountain goats.  If you look close at the bottom pix you will see a baby.

This was the last sheep ranch in the canyon.  At one time it contained 250,000 sheep.  They had a 100 year lease with the government and when the lease was up the government would not renew it.  They think that domesticated sheep give the rocky mountain sheep a lung disease.

 

This is a spot along the river called buffalo eddy.  It has petroglyphs on it.  They say these are lot like the ones found in the southwest.

This is just a little of what we saw.  It was a great day and we enjoyed it very much but when we crawled out of the boat after 10 hours we thought someone ran over us.  Needless to say Ziggy was glad to see us too.