Colorado River and Grand Canyon — July 2013 (part 2)
There are lots more photos than those on this page; see the links at the bottom. Also there are full sized image files as well (they take a while to download), just add "big_" to the filename like this: Instead of imgp5442.jpg try big_imgp5442.jpg
| River day five started in the early morning hours for David: he put his camera down, pointed at the sky to try to catch the amazing stars. There are some bushes on the left and you can make out the milkyway in this as well. You can also see the progression of the sun coming down the cliffside over the course of about an hour as we were getting up and ready in the three photos below. |
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| By day five, we were old hands with the bag line routine as we packed up for more rapids, canyon beauty and side hikes. Our first stop: Shinumo Creek for more fun with waterfalls. This one, you could get into from behind via a little cave. |
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| Next stop: an ampitheater interlude at Bonita Creek (is that the right location? -- no GPS from there). Val and Easy got out guitars... |
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| After lunch and a few more rapids, we spotted big horn sheep on our way to Deer Creek, falls which is very impressive. Especially from inside; Sarah got the shots below of David and Robert backing into the falls. |
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| Then, on to our next campsite, another beauty. We had time for fishing and cards and generally hanging out. |
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| River day six: the trip is winding down. We started with a hike up Havasu Creek, but the skies opened up and we turned around for the safety of the rafts on river. No one wanted to get caught in a flash flood coming down the creek. The waterfalls were once again impressive. This was not a long or strong a storm as our first monsoon. |
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After Havasu, Lava Falls — the river's most famous rapid. And Easy's first time as moterman through Lava. We had a great run. (The promised photo of Matt (on the right) and Easy on the left, on the way to Lava.) 
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We didn't realize until a bit later that John broke the handle on his motor in Lava; the run looked good from our point of view. That brought us to our last campsite, right below Son of Lava. Another pretty spot to hang out. |
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| This was the one night we had rain in camp and eventually ended up setting up tents. The rain did not seem to slow us down much — especially when it comes to cake. |
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Between the dinner rain and the tent setting up rain, we had a special "No-Talent, Talent Show;" a highlight was My Guides by Sarah and the Zappettes (sung to the tune of My Girl): I've got sunburn.. Chorus: I've got cold splashes Chorus Children squealing Chorus and big Doo-whop finish River day seven was a quick pack up and head a little ways down the river. The skys cleared (just about the time the last tents were set up) and day was beautiful again. Than a little float/motor down the river; this time with Robert in the front of the raft. |
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That brought us to the end of our river trip. But the fun was not yet over; we had a helicopter trip to the Bar 10 ranch and airstrip for our flight back to Vegas. |
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| Showers followed by lunch, ping pong and baseball at Bar 10 before the flight back to Vegas. |
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| And one final game of "Farkel," of course. |
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| After the flight; we had a couple more days in Vegas to slowly break up and go our seperate ways. We moved out of The Desert Rose and into the Mirage for the fancier pool and proximity to other Vegas sites. |
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| And that's the end of our most excellent trip to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. A once in a life time experience that we'd all love to repeat. |
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Vacation notes:
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