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I had purchased a nice (but ultimately unreliable) SeaDoo watercraft in San Diego. This was seemingly a nice ski, it was fast and turned well. Also, I purhased a hydro-trailer that was an injection-molded towable hull that hooked onto the ski with an A-frame tow hitch. This allowed carrying a reasonable amount of cargo as well as 15 extra gallons of gas. The hydro-trailer allowed us to greatly extend the range of trips that we could do with the ski.
Being the adventurous sorts that we were, Kathleen and I planned a trip to Yuma with the ski. The objective was explore the Colorado River north of Yuma all the way to Blythe, AZ if fuel permitted. I had never been to that area, but it would be fun if for no other reason than it was unexplored (to us).
The photos below are scans of chemical photos of what we saw. These were taken with a Nikon N90 camera using generic Kodak print film. Enjoy.
We went from Yuma to Blythe on the jet ski. The trip was uneventful and we were lucky to be able to take on fuel at Blythe Marina, thus not requiring the use of any fuel that we so painstakingly brought in our hydro-trailer. On the way back to Yuma, we stopped on a sand bar for a beer. There was no boat traffic and no wind. While we were finishing our beers, we heard a clacking sound. We started looking for the source of the noise and found it across the river. There was a herd of rare desert big horn sheep on the opposite shore coming down to drink at the river's edge. You can see their white rumps on the rock face. And, if you look carefully, you can see their feeding trails that have been trampled into the cliff face.
Here is a closer shot of the sheep. Note that there is a doe drinking at the water's edge.
Look closely and you can see one of the does drinking from the cliff. Interesting that they could have gone through the reeds, but since they have an advantage on steep cliffs, they chose to approch via the cliff. Note the rack on the ram.
On the final leg of the return trip, we stopped to take photos. This shot shows "the Pichacho" which is a volcanic plug.
This was an excellent trip. The trip was perhaps 2 hours in each direction at full throttle. Of course, we stopped for breaks, but it could be done in much shorter time that that if you did not stop. The weather was excellent. We were very happy to have seen the sheep. This was the first time that I have ever seen them in the wild since they are so rare and reclusive.