Like most of my days this one was busy from the start. My friend Tom and I headed up the highway to my storage unit in Longmont so that I could stash some camping/boating gear away for the winter, and so we could grab my Old Town 18-6 canoe for him to use on the Green River later this fall. Kind of a pain to get it down from the ropes holding it up near the ceiling, but we managed to do that as well as put my solo canoe back up in it's place. So now I'll be able to walk into the place without first having to move a boat out of the way.

    We went and had some breakfast at a local cafe in Longmont next and then dropped by my trailer storage place so I could drop off a few things there as well. On the way back to Denver it occurred to me that Tom could store his sailboat up there in my spot while I'm off on the road. I keep one there all year round because it is convenient if I need to come back at anytime and park the trailer there. But it stands empty for nearly 9 months out of the year so someone ought to be taking advantage of it.

    Have been working on Grand Canyon pictures for most of the day since. Have now finished sorting the first 5 days of the trip out and will start posting pictures a day at a time or as I find time to do it.

   Took Tom and Donna out to dinner this evening to show my appreciation to them for letting me stay here for so long. Yep; Mexican food and margaritas again!

   Only two more days to go before I get back on the road again. It's going to be a busy time for me doing last minute errands and seeing people one last time. Will certainly miss all of my friends and family back here, but am excited to meet and see new and old friends back east again.

    Here are the photo's from our first day on our Grand Canyon Raft trip.

On the bus early the first morning. It is about 5-6 hours from our hotel in Las Vegas, where our tour company picked us up, to the put-in spot at Lee's Ferry on the Colorado, below Glen Canyon dam. Along the way we stopped at the company warehouse in Fredonia to pick up our sleeping gear, waterproof bags and box and to make a sack lunch for the rest of the trip to the put-in.

Our bus, both to the river and then back to Las Vegas after getting off, was first class.

Getting ready to take off on the river. Our personnel gear bags and sleeping gear bags are already packed on board. There are 24 people in our group as well as the 4 guides and all the food and water to fit onto the two rafts. It all seemed to fit on board somehow.

Almost ready to board now that we have our life vests on and adjusted. They were very hot to start with, but were welcome once we hit the rapids and started getting splashed by the river water that comes out of the bottom of Glen Canyon Dam at a very frigid 47 degrees (F).

About 10 minutes into the trip and the motor on the raft I'm on starts to sputter. Walker, our leader goes to work on it and replaces the spark plug(s), wires, coil and who knows what else in 20 min's or less. (I'm starting to wonder about what we have gotten our selves into). When all of that doesn't do anything to fix the problem he just pulls the cover off of the 'spare' engine each boat has on board. After that I stopped worrying about things going wrong on the trip.

13 passengers and two crew on each boat, at least most of the time. Plenty of places to sit and it is even pretty comfortable seating. I'm taking pictures for most of this day so I'm up high and back near the boat driver in what I came to call the 'rumble seat'.

A couple miles into the canyon and already the cliffs are several hundred feet high. We have just come into view of the 'Navajo Bridge', the only vehicle crossing or the river for more than 300 miles.

The rear most span in this picture is the original single lane car bridge that is now used just for pedestrians. The newer span is double laned and less than 20 years old.

One of our first rapids, only a Class 3-4 on a scale of 1 to 10. We soon learned that you didn't have to fear about getting tossed off the raft in these rapids, but you often ended up wetter than in some of the bigger ones because the boat driver tended to avoid the bigger 'holes' on those rapids, where as they would just plow straight through them on the smaller waves.

The scenery is already spectacular.

Lots of multi colored rock of course... very pretty stuff.

 

We saw several groups of desert big horn sheep in the canyon. This was the first group and was comprised of several ewe's and their offspring.

Our first camp and everyone is trying to figure out what needs to be done and how. Here we have Spud and Jill setting up the cots the company, (Colorado River And Trail Expeditions, 'CRATE'), supplied us with. Most of us spent every night sleeping out under the stars, and or moon, because it was to hot for a tent and really not necessary. There was one night later on that threatened rain, but it only lasted about 5 min's before clearing up again. No bugs to speak of, none that bit much anyway. Plenty of bats to keep them all at bay.

I love the light at the beginning and end of each day. In canyonlands it really shows the cliffs at their best.

Chairs for everyone. We, as a group, helped out the crew in loading and unloading the boats because we just don't know any other way to do it. But they did make it clear from the start that they would be doing the cooking and most of the clean-up. It didn't take long for any us to get use to that idea.

The last bit of daylight on the high cliffs over looking our camp site. It really doesn't get much better than this.