Day 1: Monday, 18 February 2008, Martinez Lake, Arizona

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After turning in early the night before, I slept straight through until 12:30 a.m., then woke up every 45 minutes or so after that until perhaps 5 o'clock, then I slept soundly again until a little after 7 o'clock. I woke with a start. I'd overslept.

I'd wanted to be on the road well before dawn in order to arrive at Martinez Lake right before the sun came up. Instead, I didn't get to the lake until around 8:15. I still had a great morning, and while the morning wasn't nearly as successful as the previoius evening, I got a few decent bird photographs.

Sometime after nine o'clock, I paddled out to the Colorado River to go downstream to relax in a backwater channel that Mindy and I had poked our boats into very briefly on the last trip. I was taken aback when I reached the river.

The river was a good 2-3 feet higher than when I was last there, and was obviously flowing with more resolve. Many of the beaches and sand bars that had been above water a month earler at 3,500-5300 cfs were under water. Checking later, I found out the river was running at around 9,500 cfs, 2-3 times the volume a month prior. The flow looked swift enough to be challenging to paddle back up against, so I first headed upstream to make sure it was possible, then I drifted downstream to use my GPS to measure the flow velocity. The river was flowing at about 2.3 mph, a rate I could paddle against without huge difficulty.

At the backwater channel, I discovered that the paddle-wide channel Mindy and I had found before was now 50 feet wide, promising more backwaters to explore. Before knowing that the water level was up, I'd planned on kayaking the backwater until I ran out of water then kicking back to write or read. I ended up paddling all morning and into the early afternoon without stopping. I probably paddled at least 5 miles of backwater, not including back-tracking, and there was definitely more to explore.

At around mid-day, I found a medium sized lake nestled up against the surrounding hills, at the extreme edge of the geologic floodplain of the Colorado River. It was a neat little lake, and I used the opportunity of finding solid ground to get out and stretch my legs a bit.