Spent the day dealing with deferred maintenance around the trailer today. First on the list was packing up and taking the trailer next door where the guys there jacked the bumper back in place and re-welded a couple of the seams that had broken. They also put a couple small pieces of new metal on as reinforcing. They did a decent job and it looks pretty good, and the best part is that it only cost $56. Of course once I got it back over to the RV campground and got it all set back up I took a little better look at it and noticed a whole bunch of places where it still needed additional work done if it is going to support everything I have hanging on it right now. Can't blame the fix-it guys for not doing it as I was the one to tell them what to do. Will have to rethink what I want to do about it now, as it might take a lot of money to fix it up the way it needs to be. I'm thinking that I'll go to 'Plan B' and put the generator in the back of the truck for right now and leave everything off of the bike rack.  I may have to wait until next summer when I can drop by my brother-in-law's place in Nebraska and ask him what he thinks will be my best option; weld more backing plates on or get a whole new, stronger steel bumper. In the meantime though I'm glad it is back together enough to go down the road with out worrying to much about it falling off anymore.

    Also got the scissor jack up in front welded on this morning, so there is no longer a worry about it falling off any more either. As I was sorting things out in the back of the truck I also found a spray can full of roof sealant that I had bought a couple weeks ago so I spent a few minutes and climbed up on the roof and sprayed that around the front vent and the sky light over the tub, two places that seem to keep leaking no matter what I do. I'm thinking this stuff ought to do the trick though... and if it doesn't I'll go out and get a couple more cans of it.

   Talked to one of my friends back in Colorado this afternoon. Cell phones are just an amazing device. How did we ever get along with out them and why did I protest so long and hard before finally giving in and getting one? Sounds like it is starting to cool down back there now... even a bit of snow in the mountains already. Am a little sad that I'll be missing this time of the year again up in the mountains. Perhaps in a year or two aI'll stick around long enough to do some hunting again with my family. In the mean time my friend caught me up on the condition of another one of my friends, George. He is the one who suffered a collapsed lung a couple of weeks ago and ended up in the hospital a couple of times because of it.

    The last time I had talked to him he was telling me how they had pumped 'Talc' into his chest cavity, no that's not a mis-print, in order to 'glue' the exterior part of his lung to the walls of his chest. Seemed kind of an odd thing to do to me, and how does one even figure out that talc is the stuff to use in the first place? Anyway; it seems to have worked as he is doing much better now. Still having problems walking any distance with out running out of oxygen, but that is still better than not needing any more oxygen at all. So Yay!

    These are the last photo's from the Grand Canyon trip, you were all probably growing as tired of them as I was loading them up anyway. Will post additional photo's and videos of the trip if any real good stuff comes in. Otherwise it is time to move on to more recent stuff again. So here is the 11th day of our trip.

Our last day on the river and Walker has us up before dawn so we can beat some of the heat later on when we hit Lake Mead.

 

Nearly all packed and ready to go.

We decided it might be nicer to have our group photo shot here on the river rather than in some parking lot somewhere. Of course with this many people it's pretty much like herding cats. Can't decide if Marty was helping things or not. He is 6'-8" tall if any of you are wondering. (Oh... and he doesn't play basketball either!)

We finally got everyone settled, so here is the group.

Only thing left is for a couple of us to push off and climb aboard.

One nice thing about this time of day, and I use the term day loosely, is that the light is always beautiful on the high cliffs.

 

Ben spent a bit of time entertaining us with excerpts from his recently accepted master's thesis. He had written about his own hardship in reconciling his love of the river and being a boatman with his families Mormon religion. It was an interesting premise and I hope to read the whole thing one of these days.

Relaxing a bit on the boat.

One of the Native American Tribes, I believe it is maybe the Hopi's, have constructed this see through lookout on part of their reservation.

A closer look at the lookout. If you look closely you'll note that there doesn't appear to be anyone out walking on the see through part at the moment.






 

Time to get off the boats one last time. What a wonderful trip we had, what a great bunch of people to do it with. Memories have been made that will last a life time. As we board the bus for our trip back to Las Vegas it is a bitter sweet moment, a time to reflect on what I have just experienced, regret that it can't go on forever and happy to think that it is now time to move on to new adventures. Isn't life grand!