Some years ago...

I went to Moab, Utah to play golf in a friends tournament. He and I are old Army buddies. While there he mentioned that his daughter had just got a job taking people rafting down the Colorado River. We summoned up our courage and signed on.

It WAS a rafting trip but the only thing 'white' about it was the color of the raft. IOW, no rapids... the Colorado River near Moab is as placid and it gets. You can wade across the river. BUT... even though no adrenalin thrill was in the offing it turned out to be one of the most fascinating expeditions of my life. The reason being:

The entire shoreline, (and river), in that area was the site of more old western movies than you can count. Plus - many of the sets built for those movies still exist. Spanish missions, small towns of both Spanish and American West architecture, etc. And here's where my friend and I got lucky -

His daughter, taking us down the river, was in training... so an instructor was along. Our good fortune... the instructor owned the rafting company and was extremely knowledgable about the areas history AND... get this, had worked on a few of those old movies that were filmed there. So we'd be rafting along and he'd make comments like, "Remember the cattle crossing the river in the movie "fill in the blank", this is where they shot that scene." I remember him mentioning one Spanish Mission facade and he named at least a dozen movies that used that Facade and said it was probably used in dozens of old westerns.

As I said, that was some years ago... perhaps 25? At that time the area was exactly as it had been during the golden era of western movie making. I don't know about today. Moab has turned into a tourist mecca... with dirt biking, 4 wheeling, rock climbing, mountain biking...... I passed by there just a few weeks ago, about an hour north on I-70, and you would have thought I was at a freeway exchange in LA. Perhaps what I saw on that rafting trip no longer exists, I don't know. - JamesJM