Salt River looney tunes

When we went tubing down the Salt River a couple of months ago, we saw a lot of red winged blackbirds. I've been wanting to get some pictures of them since then. I went down to the river today to get some. It was a funny trip.

I planned my trip with Google Earth. I parked where the road has a wide shoulder. It was a short walk to the river. I thought there would be a bank there, but there was a cliff. I went up river a little ways and found this guy. He was standing there drinking beer and entertaining everybody on the river. Sorry about the shaky camera, but I was zoomed in a lot.

Here's a group of tubers. A couple of them are excited because they spotted somebody (me) on the bank.

From Salt_River_2008_09_13

More about excited tubers later.

I could see a rocky bank downstream, so I went in that direction. There was a place where people used to drive down to the river, so it was easy to get to the bank. Check out the rocky bank in this picture.

From Salt_River_2008_09_13

Those rocks are home to thousands of spiders. I didn't notice them at first because they hid when I approached. I was standing still by the river and noticed a spider on a rock. Then another, and another and ... They were all over the place. I was trying to get a picture of each one but I gave up. Some of them were chasing others around. Sometimes they would skip across the water to get to another rock. Here's the one I like best.

From Salt_River_2008_09_13

If you stand still, the drunks in the river usually won't even know you are there. One guy's tube slowly rotated until he was looking directly at me, though. Suddenly, his hands shot up over his head and he started bouncing up and down and shouting, "Hey, hey, hey man, hey!", as if he hadn't seen another human being in a month. I waved. I'm standing there with two cameras around my neck. He says, "Hey man, are you taking pisshures?" I didn't misspell it. That's what he said. It was the best he could do. I told him I wanted to get some pictures of red winged blackbirds and asked if he'd seen any. He said, "Yeah, man, I got a red winged blackbird for you right here in my pants!", then laughed uproariously at his wit. So did his equally incapacitated buddy. I told him he was very funny. I think he took it as a compliment. He was quiet for a while as he tried to think of something else funny to say. Or maybe he was just busy polluting his patch of the river.

Two more guys were a short distance behind those two. One of them told me that he usually sees red winged blackbirds on the river but hadn't seen any today. Then his buddy seemed to regain consciousness. He must have been drinking for two. He said something like, "What? Blackbirds? Who?" His friend was trying to shut him up but quickly realized the futility. "Hey, yeah, I saw one! It was back there (points upriver) at 30, uh, 30,000 feet! Ha ha ha haaaa!. It was at latitude 75 24 longitude 16 18 1000 feet ..." He carried on like that, shouting "latitude" and "longitude" and random assortments of numbers and units of measure, until his voice slowly faded away down the river. Maybe he was hoping I would compliment his humor, also.

I don't know why there aren't more drownings on that river. I never did see a red winged blackbird. Click below to see all of the pictures.