weekend visit

Hello all...
Paul and I arrived late Friday morning and set up camp at Bowen Ranch. We no sooner started down the hill then along came Mike Castro responding to a reported injury...just how many search and rescues does this man do? At least he seems to have his priorities straight...stay at the cabin to make sure that each and every entrant pays up or go try to save a life. Good choice, Mike! (there are more important things than money)

Friday at the springs was truly wonderful. No sign of glass anywhere, and the few visitors were all very nice and respectful of the place and of others. Lots of floaties being left by visitors, though. I'm sure that they think they are doing a good thing by leaving their floaties for others to use, but then they do get holes in them and become trash for others to haul out.

The planted trees seem to have made an amazing recovery from last year's vandalism and drought, and I was glad to see that people have been watering them.

I talked to another person who has not been able to access the forum since the registration change...same sort of problem that I had until Rick intervened. Seems that it is still a problem for some.

The ranger came down and the few of us who were still there packed it up and left.

Saturday morning we got an early start and managed (for once) to beat Arizona Mike down to the springs. There were more people, but again a great crowd. Very clean near the pools, but a few bulky items from upstream. We ended up too loaded down to carry out all the leaking floaties. One regular visitor brought a whole watermelon down and we were calling out "watermelon for everyone...come and get it." We had to call it out a few times before people who didn't know us got the hint that we really did mean them, too. Got to meet some great people while sharing watermelon. The tightrope walker was there and did the hula hoop while on the line. A guitar player and a banjo player provided some nice, mellow bluegrass music.

We stayed late enough to greet some of the night visitors as they arrived. Someone started a fire upstream, and some people hiking in from Bowen yelled down at them from the trail to put it out. As we were leaving we met them (the hikers, not the people with the fire) and talked a bit. While I don't approve of night use in general because it is against the rules, and because so many night users need some training in appropriate etiquette, I do feel good when I see that there are night users who have good attitudes and watch out for the place while they are there. As we hiked up we could see no sign of the fire upstream, so they must have put it out when those people told them to.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend, too.