2016 Summer Road Trip: UT, CO, NM: Day 7: Sat, 6/18: Fishing in Dolores and Stand up Paddleboarding, kayaking McPhee Reservoir, CO

Day 7: Saturday, 6/18: Fishing in Dolores and Stand up Paddleboarding, kayaking McPhee Reservoir, CO

Sarah and Sam went fishing early today to the beautiful fishing ponds 10 miles up the road in the mountains. They had fun. Sarah can fish!!! She caught 3 rainbow trout today and Sam only caught one! They had fun fishing for a few hours while Andrea and Ryan threw baseballs and kicked the soccer ball playing in camp. After lunch, we took our brand new inflatable stand up paddleboard and our inflatable kayak and drove 10 minutes to the McPhee Reservoir. It was great—we drove to the far side of the reservoir, down a gravel road and a dirt path to the edge of the lake. We had our own small secluded beach to ourselves!

All four of us were able to stand up on the paddleboard and cruise around. We traded off riding it for about 20 minutes each. We are so proud of Sarah and Ryan. They took right to it and are good at paddle boarding. Andrea was great too! Then there’s Sam. He fell 2 times and was wobbly much of the time. The water is a bit cold but not too bad. We also had fun kayaking. Then while we were playing and having a great time on the edge of the lake, a huge brush fire broke out behind us. We didn’t even notice it until a kayaker in the lake yelled at us to look behind us and see the huge fire. We quickly started deflating the kayak and SUP as the fire got bigger and closer. It was a bit scary. Then the park rangers came over by boat and told us to pack up our stuff quicker. The funny thing is Ryan was just playing in the water in some other imaginary world totally oblivious to the rangers who came over and to the fire/smoke itself. When we told Ryan firmly that it was time to go NOW, he got all huffy and said defiantly “Why—I don’t want to go. I’m having fun!” I said because there’s a huge fire coming near us—Look right behind me. He then looked and immediately straightened his back and said “OH! Now I’m a bit wierded out. That fire is big and kind of scary.” So we rapidly started driving down the gravel road as the park service truck raced passed us to evacuate others at the lake. We had to stop at the fire/police checkpoint that we were behind and wait for emergency vehicles to pass until we could get to the safer side. What an exciting end to our nice day at the lake. We had dinner at the micro brewery in Cortez and then came back to our nice camp. It was so awesome seeing a huge full moon over Mesa Verde from a distance as we drove to camp.