The Grand Canyon (Day 2) - The Rock!

The following post is from the journal I kept of my recent adventure upon a 21-day private river rafting trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon from Lee's Ferry to Diamond Peak (about 230 miles) that took place between April 18th and May 8th, 2012.

April 19, 2012

We are camped about a 1/2 mile before North Canyon. This is the same spot we camped the first night on the river in 2008 when I was a passenger on a commercial trip with Grand Canyon Expeditions and Tricia and Butch were our guides. I remember it vividly as I decided to sleep on a large flat rock with the idea that there would be less sand. Well, there was, but f*ck that rock was HARD! It was the last rock I ever slept on and tonight I'm proud to say I'm sleeping in a sandy spot about 30 feet away from that same rock.

I've got to make this entry short as I've run out of time today to write and now it's late, dark and I'm tired so I'm going to summarize today's events.

* We broke camp a bit slow this morning. However, our approach is the no-schedule approach. The only schedule is simply to see what happens at this point in the trip.

* Robert got us through the Badger Creek and House Rock Rapids without incident. House Rock had us both nervous and was a good confidence builder. We scouted it before hand and Butch and Bob were excellent mentors and advisers.

* I practiced on quite a few smaller rapids and seem to be getting the hang of our raft.

* We changed the name of our boat to the Honey Bucket (because we now realize that by the end of the trip we'll be hauling all the shit and trash) and made "Flower Power" our mantra to yell before entering a rapid. I somehow think that Flower Power will still stick as the name.

* Steak and potatoes for dinner tonight. Yippee!

* Veggies and Southwest style tacos were for lunch.

* I totally failed on the GoPro several times today with having the wrong mount or running the batteries dead by accident right before several rapids, hence missing the shot. I'm sure I'll learn from this and have all the kinks worked out for later in the trip when we get to some BIG rapids.

That's all for today. I'm exhausted. No tent tonight. Just me and my sleeping bag and stars and satellites above in the moonless sky!