I visited the Gunlock Ocean over the weekend.
For people who live in the Southern Utah area, the body of
water northwest of St. George is officially known as the Gunlock reservoir.
However, over the years I've learned that the terms used for
certain geographic features are not interchangeable between people from
"back east" and those of us who live "out west."
For instance, running through the southern border of the
small Nevada town of Mesquite where I live is a tiny trickle of dirty brown
water that is so shallow and undrinkable that no self-respecting fish would be
caught dead in it. Not only can you
walk across this body of water; during most of the year, you can do it without
getting the Nike logo on your sneakers wet.
Behind the home where I grew up in Maryland, there was a drainage ditch
that was bigger than this creek wannabe.
Heck, I've seen leaky bathtubs that have created larger bodies of water.
The name of this tiny spill of non-potable liquid?
The Virgin River.
It's bad enough that anyone refers to it as a river.
I'm sure that the Mississippi, the Missouri, the
Susquehanna, and the Caloosahatchee all get together on Facebook every night
and make fun of the Virgin "River."
What makes the name even more unrealistic is calling it a
"virgin." I'm convinced that
whoever hung this moniker on such a defiled stream is the same guy that wrote
the 1984 hit which made an identical claim about Madonna.
Even the federal government has bought into the lunacy,
referring to the Virgin in historic documents as a "navigable
waterway."
Yeah, right.
The only way you could get a toy remote control boat from
one side of the "river" to the other is if you installed a set of
wheels.
So overblowing the importance of a watering hole out west is
a common practice, which leads me to christening Gunlock Ocean.
On the way to the reservoir on Mother's Day (mom's request),
we encountered a few vehicles towing boats in the opposite direction. In most places, that's a good sign. But in this barren stretch of desert, it
doesn't mean much. I personally believe
that boat owners in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona hook their boats up to the back
of their SUV's twice a month and take them for a drive just to give the
watercraft a change of scenery from the dusty back yard where it usually lives,
and to impress the neighbors. The truth
is that the only time these powerboats have touched water is during the Mohave
desert's semi-annual rain. Well, people
out west call it rain. Back east, it
would be referred to as brief malfunction of the lawn sprinklers.
To reach the Gunlock Ocean, we had to pass through some of
the ugliest terrain on the planet. A
few years ago, I used the same descriptor for that moonscape between Overton,
Nevada and Lake Mead. I was wrong. The 25 minute drive between Beaver Dam,
Arizona and Gunlock, Utah is uglier.
When we finally arrived, I was greeted by a breathtaking
stretch of water. In the middle of all
that desolation was a gorgeous pond.
Well, back east it would have been referred to as a pond. Some of the more conservative local namers
would call it a lake. I went ahead and
gave it the full "out west" treatment of naming it Gunlock Ocean.
As has become the custom out west whenever the government realizes
they have a tiny sliver of real estate that isn't completely hideous, there was
a cover charge. The state of Utah had
dumped a handful of unwanted picnic tables around the water's edge, parked a
$30,000 pickup truck next to the entrance, and paid a state employee about
$40,000 a year to collect a $7 admission fee.
As I mentioned in a previous article a few weeks ago about Lake Powell,
the government was again gouging citizens to pay for a microscopic slice of
land that their tax dollars had already purchased.
Fortunately we only had to pay $3 because Utah believes if
you have someone in the car over age 65, the group should only get half-gouged.
It was a pleasant and entertaining few hours.
Probably the funniest moment was when an actual boat appeared. (The "park" has the unmitigated
optimism of offering boat ramps. I
didn't ask, but I suspect they charge about $50 for the privilege of launching
your watercraft there.)
The boat owner and his half-dozen guests probably spent an
hour packing supplies and preparing the boat to be towed another hour or more
to Gunlock. Then it took about 15
minutes to launch the boat, tie it up, and put away the truck and trailer. Another 15 minutes, and everybody was on
board and ready for their day of fun.
I watched as the skipper fired the powerful inboard engine
at the dock. Then he hit full throttle,
making the 20-foot craft jump onto a plane.
The sleek and sexy yellow boat roared for exactly 18 seconds before
reaching the opposite shore, where the captain shut down the engine, and
fishing lines began shooting from every side like a waterborne party favor.
Eighteen seconds.
Hours and hours of work, preparation, and travel, just for a
thrilling 18 seconds of wind whipping through someone's hair.
I can't report on the fish they pulled from the reservoir,
mostly because Bushnell doesn't make a set of binoculars with an electron
microscope option.
But if I know anything about estimating size out west, the
six-inch minnows were described as "20-pound monsters" once the
fishing party made the 18-second trip back to the dock and their
desert-dwelling friends.
Such is life on the high seas of the Gunlock Ocean.
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