Miles: 10.3 Steps: 24,030 Vertical gain: 622 feet Liquid consumed: 128 oz. Wildlife: Spiders, Bald eagle, cattle, horses, something splashing into the river, geese Well, another day has passed and it’s been great! Bit of a slow start this morning. It’s been cold pretty much every morning which makes it a bit challenging to get up! We did get up eventually though and enjoyed another great day! First we continued along a road down to Cisco Landing which is a boat launch site for rafters and kayakers. We turned onto the Riad there which was paved and continued a couple of miles to find out next water Cache. Everything was there as planned so Tara had some coffee, I had some water, and we were content. At this break I looked at my watch, looked at how many miles we’d done today and how many were left to complete the trip and concluded we should take a bit of a shortcut. Tara has been pretty amazing at keeping up a good pace but her feet have been bothering her and today we were making slow progress. Do we push really hard to complete the originally intended route, or do we take our time, take a shorter route and relax a little? Tara is quite competitive and doesn’t like to give up, which I respect, but we both agreed that the shorter option made more sense. With our slower pace agreed upon we enjoyed an extra long and extended break before leaving. We remained on paved roads for another mile or so and then transitioned to a rough, narrow dirt road. The sun was beating down on ya, but thankfully it’s mid-November! Can’t imagine what this trail would be like in July: Horrible to say the least! The desert sometimes seems like what the world would look like 20 years after nuclear bombshell were dropped everywhere: desolate, brown, lack of life. It’s beautiful, but it’s harsh. Even as we approached the Colorado River only the areas directly next to the river are lush. Travel much more than 50 feet from the waters edge and It’s amazing how fast the transition to brown desert occurs. We found an amazing campsite next to the Colorado River and stopped early. We had a ton of fun dunking our feet in the river (this was more aptly described as playing in the mud), climbing rocks, taking tons of photos and enjoying life. I tend to look pretty bad in many photos so Tara took a ton of photos of me to try to get at least a few good shots. Some came out great, thanks! Sunsets have been amazing the past few days and today was no exception! Blue, purple, pink, and more combined with the beautiful river made for great photos. We hung out for quite a while and got in the tent for bed afterwards.