In the comments on Nora’s Salt River picture, DG shared a link to a wonderful story of a group of German World War II POW’s who escaped from a camp in Arizona:

The plan was to float down the Cross Cut Canal, then to the Salt River, to the Gila River and on to the Colorado River which would take them into Mexico. Three of the men had constructed a canoe which could be taken apart and carried in three pieces. They had blocked up the drains in the shower room to test it for water-tightness. It never occurred to the Germans that in dry Arizona a blue line marked “river” on a map might be filled with water only occasionally. The three men with the canoe were disappointed to find the Salt River bed merely a mud bog from recent rains. Not to be discouraged, they carried their canoe pieces twenty miles to the confluence with the Gila river, only to find a series of large puddles. They sat on the river bank, put their heads in their hands and cried out their frustration.