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Our houseboating adventures ended early in the morning. In fact, Miguel was woken up to start the boat so we could start the journey back to the marina and the kids didn't roll out of bed until the journey had already begun. My brother, his friend, Miguel, and I squeezed in a final game of Hearts before it was time to unload the boat back into our vehicles and then my mom and her crew took off. It was around noon then, at the height of the hot car ride time of day, so I suggested we get lunch at the marina. That killed about an hour, landing us still solidly within a hot ride home, so Miguel found us a body of water to go explore. I have no idea what it was called or if I could find it again, but I think it was part of the Sacramento River. It didn't look very promising at first, and seemed to be getting even less promising the longer we stayed but in the end it lent to a very nice day.

The spot that Miguel found for us was a boat ramp and a small dock. I didn't want the kids swimming in the boat launch so we went trudging along the shore. There wasn't much shore to be had, most of our walk was through brambles and shallow but ice cold water, but Miguel found us a spot where we could set up a couple of chairs and the baby could float in her boat. I sat down to relax after my grumpy walk through the thorns and within twenty minutes not only was all of the sparse land under water, but it was a few feet so. I'd never seen anything like it. My guess is that the river was being filled by Lake Shasta, although since I'm not even sure where we were I can't be sure.

I was ready to just pile back into the van and begin the ride home but it was still a lot hotter than I preferred so we gave the boat ramp another chance. The entire time we were there we didn't see any boats, or anyone else for that matter besides a couple of guys who came down with their dogs. The place was quiet and desolate and the perfect type of place to sit on a dock eating sunflower seeds. So that's what I did.

We started our journey around 6:30PM but it turned out to still be too hot for Az so we stopped at yet another rest stop along the way for an hour. This time it was light out and Miguel was alert so I felt a little better about our time there. When we piled back into the car it was much cooler, and the perfect time to go on a trek back towards home.