Pretty much done here

It appears that I'm pretty much done here.

I've been thinking about a few things though that relate to the trip.

I've been learning to enjoy the moments with people that God gives me. The Canyon was just so awesome for those few days and listening, or sometimes half-listening, to the laughter that permeated the raft was something that I wont long forget.

The story that I began writing on the trip is mostly done although I'm having trouble coming up with a satisfactory ending for it. If I can come up with one then I will likely try to get it published in the next couple of months.

If it somehow does get published then I will email the group again.

If you'd like me to post anything on this site then please either post it as a comment here or email it to me and I will post it here.

And if you're reading this entry, remember that the site is a last in listing so if you want to read everything the way that I wrote it, you need to start at the bottom of the page and read each article/story that way.

Jack's pictures

Here's a link to Jack's pictures from the trip.

Ron, Mary Ann, and Marsha

One of the groups of rafters on the trip was Ron, Mary Ann, and Marsha.

Ron and Mary Ann are married and Mary Ann and Marsha are best friends. The three of them have traveled a good number of places around the country.

Mary Ann and Marsha were finishing each other's sentences or confering with each other for details on previous trips.

Ron was a hoot with his sense of humor and stories as well.

Ron's favortie joke about Mary Ann is that they have had 10 good years of marriage. Of course, they've been married for 35.

Mary Ann's retort was that it seemed more like five good year to her.

While we were at Ft. Tuthill, Ron and Mary Ann had their 35th anniversary. Since we were sitting around, I asked them how they had met. Here's how I recall the story.

Mary Ann and some friends were staying at the YWCA in Tennessee. One night four of the girls piled in their car and decided to go to the local base for a dance. The car died in the parking lot. Four servicemen stopped by to help out and since their were only four girls, the rest of the men just passed on by. They weren't able to fix the car at that time, but they went into the dance together and paired off for the night.

Ron was with a friend of Mary Ann's who had a boyfriend back home. Mary Ann was paired off with a guy who was from Kansas but told people he was from California because it sounded better.

After the dance, the guys followed the girls back stopping at every gas station until they found someone who could fix the car. Once they got back to the "Y", they decided to go out to eat at the diner nearby.

When they sat down at the table, Ron strategically placed himself across the table from Mary Ann.

In the middle of the meal, Mary Ann felt this foot playing with his foot. Mary Ann looked up and saw that Ron was wearing what she described as that "sh*t eating grin of his". She smiled back at him. And so their evening went.

Well, there was no phone where Mary Ann could be reached at the Y so she wrote down the number of the pay phone on a slip of paper and palmed it to Ron when they shook hands at the end of the evening.

She had one more date with Kansas, but after that it was pretty much all Ron.

The Final Day

When we woke up to the news that we had been sleeping on Scorpian Beach and that some previous raft trips had been so thick with scorpians that the whole raft trip had slept on the boats, we were a bit unnerved.

However, the coffee drinkers were glad to just have some coffee and we were all eagerly awaiting the announcement of what Rick and Josh would make us for breakfast (DeAnna was still asleep .. a-gain). And this time it was French Toast.

Overall, this was just a feast of a trip.

This third day was short since were going to clean up and pull out at noon. A good part of it was also on the lake at the bottom of this run.

We parked the boat once just sort of letting it float while we all swam. DeAnna entertained with front flips off the bow of the boat and Josh and Ryan found some nice cliffs to jump off of. The rest of us were contented with some swimming and such.

Further down we moored for lunch and pretty much ate everything that was left in the boat with DeAnna pushing the last slices of fruit, pickles, chips, and cookies on whoever would take them.

DeAnna finished off the sliced vlasics. I personally was willing to sacrifice for the team and eat the last apple slices, last several handfuls of tortilla chips, and one of the cookie boxes. Mary Ann finished off the watermelon for us and Rick knocked off the remaining Sour Cream onion pringles.

When we got back to the landing where we would take out, we had another couple of hours of work while we unpacked the boats and helped load the trucks. Then washed the boats as best we could (as well as throwing several buckets of water at each other and the raft guides).

From there it was back into a different van (this one didn't break down) and onto the road. For me, the next highlight was my first Pepsi in three days since all of mine had gotten left behind on the white van.

So ended our rafting trip.

I'll post a few more stories in the next few days and if anyone wants me to post something for them, then send it along.

Day 2

Breakfast this morning was bacon, eggs, hash browns, and english muffins. Coffee was on early and most of us (except for DeAnna who just kept sleeping and sleeping and oh never mind) were up early with the sun or soon after.

The second day of the rafting held only one big hole just below the beach where we stayed for the night.

This was a nice little bounce to wake us up in the morning and then we headed into a more casual float even than the previous day.

Part way down, Mary Ann and Marsha ventured out in the inflatable kayaks to search for rocks for a grandson and just to try it out.

When we had gone for a couple of hours, we stopped to lash the boats together and enter into what some of us would refer to as the "Water World" phase for the next couple of days. While we were stopped there, Brady and a friend roared up in a motorized raft with our cooking stove which we had left sitting on the beach when we packed up the boats the day before!

Once the boats were lashed together and a slow outboard engine (running us 5 to 10 MPH) was strapped on, we shoved off in our new configuration. We had two boats up front with the third one strapped behind, and between the two so we were like a triangle with one short flat side facing the front and the two long sides on either side.

One of the inflatable kayaks was deflated and the other was layed lengthwise across the bow to serve as both a shield for when we made it to the lake as well as a providing two seats or one laying surface.

Three beach umbrellas were set up in the forward boats and most of the people piled in under neath those as the Arizona summer sun beat down upon us. Rick kept watch on the front half of the boat entertaining rafters with stories while Josh and DeAnna drove the boat and kept watch on the couple of stragglers who prefered to sit out in the sun.

Nick tried to sleep through it all while the rest of us reveled in stories or just took it all in.

Lunch was served on the boat with fresh Chicken salad sandwiches topped with fresh lettuce, tomatos, and peppers passed around along with chips and such.

As we got close to our sleeping point, we pulled in and moored to the shore for an hour or so to let the worse of the heat pass while sat in a shaded location. We had two bits of entertainment during this time, aside from the matchless beauty around us.

The first was the two teenagers who acquired the guides giant squirt guns and proceeded to dodge around the boat in the shallow water and on shore. They occassionally hit adults despite calls of "Dry Zone" (especially from Josh). After a while, they forgot that they were trying to keep dry and invented new ways of hiding from each other like swimming UNDER the boat (not the dryest area of all).

The second part of the entertainment will likely sound pitiful without having been there but I'll share it as well. We sat and watched dirt cave into the river. No, really. The reason that it was so cool is that we were seeing the canyon change right in front of us. After a while, the big bet was whether or not some of the small tree/large bushes would cave into the water as well. In the end, the roots were holding them to higher ground, but many did tip over and dip into the river.

Just after this, I had what was probably the best experience of the entire trip for me. Our camp was going to be set up about 1000 yards down river and around a big bend from our mooring spot so I asked if I could just float down the river. Of course, Nick and Ryan joined me.

Just a life jacket and a helmet and a float in the Grand Canyon.

The three of us spread out fairly quickly as Ryan got out into the current and quickly caught up with the boats. I stayed to the left for a while then strayed out into the current and began to push down pretty quickly. Nick took the longest and probably took great joy in the concern that the adults from the boats showed when he finally made his way onto shore.

It's hard to explain the freedom of a float like this. Knowing that safety was around the corner, but at the same time feeling for all the world like you were alone in the world. I'd left my goggles on the boat so I couldn't even see Nick after a few minutes. We would let out a whistle every few minutes just to make sure that each other was still doing okay and I gave him a holler when I disappeared around the corner.

The first boat that I saw around the corner was not our raft but a nice little boat that had two couple camped nearby. They yelled a hey and offered me my choice of beer or water (no telling what took sixteen year old Nick so long to catch up with us :-) ), but I declined.

An extra benefit of the float was that the boat was completely unpacked when I got there and I got to jump right into sitting down and working on some short stories.

This night was Hawaiian shirt night except for the person who DIDN'T read the instructions on what to bring (that would be me).

Dinner was fatitas with homemade guacamole and another sauce which I mentioned earlier in DeAnna's profile.

This night, more people sat around the tiki torches although Josh, Ryan, and Nick disappeared and visited the couples I mentioned earlier, with Ryan and Nick getting the guy to tell crazy fishing stories. However, once it was time to go to bed, the place emptied out.

By the way, did I mention that the guides

a) slept on the boats (suppossedly so that if one floated away, they'd be able to come back for us)
and
b) that they neglected to mention that the name of our camping spot that night was "Scorpian Beach" ?

That night we didn't see any Scorpians although I did have a lot of critter tracks around my sleeping area which was sort of off to one side by itself. I slept pretty well all night with the exception of a bathroom break somewhere along the line.

Which leads us, of course, to ... the final day

Day 1

So what was the river like after we left the naked raft guide ornament sitting on edge of the water.

Well, day 1 was a quick float if you will with the guides needing to do some minor paddling to avoid eddies and occassionally some major paddling when they got their rafts caught in them (NOTE: For those who don't know, an eddie is basically a calm part of the river that is out of the current. It's good to use when you want to slow down or take a break, but often a pain to get out of once you're in it.)

We had broken into three groups when we arrived. Well, four, really.

The lead boat was manned by Rick and contained Ron, Mary Ann, and Marsha. Josh followed in the second boat with Joe, Frank, and Gary while Jack and I were in the sweep boat with DeAnna.

The two youngsters, Nick and Ryan, took the inflatable kayaks and were busy using those to paddle around the river. They were suppossed to stay between Josh's raft and DeAnna's raft, but that can be a difficult task when you're new to the kayaks and the river plays some tricks on you. These guys both did incredibly good at the Kayaks. Josh shouted instructions to them before certain rapids and they followed him for the most part. To my knowledge, they never got flipped. Ryan displayed some amazing skills in the kayak and the few times that Nick got pulled into an eddie, he demonstrated just how much strength he's got as he dug his way out.

The boats were set up with two wooden oars for the guides to use piled on top of all of the gear in the rafts. Those of us who were rafters sat in the bow of the boat and depending on the condition of the river we more or less could relax.

Part way down the river, Nick gave me a chance to try out his kayak. As I got seated, DeAnna looked over at me and said, "By the way, in about 20 seconds we're going to hit the biggest rapid of the day."

So I had about 20 seconds to figure out which side of the kayak to paddle on before we got into the rapids. It wasn't really that difficult. Basically, you paddle on the side that you're turned towards. So if you're bow is off center to the left, then you paddle on the left and it pushes you back into line.

As I hit the biggest hole in the rapid, I couldn't quite get the bow pointed straight and I came about two thirds of the way out of the boat and thought I was about to swim, but instead, I was able to lean just enough to fall back into the boat. After the rapids, I let Nick take back over, but at least I accomplished a first, getting into the kayak and trying it out a little.

All of the guides were talented and handled the oars with some great care although one of the guys did get himself stuck in an eddie for about 10 minutes :-)

Part way down, one of the guides saw what they thought was trash in the water of one of the eddies and sent Nick over to fish it out. Nick dipped it out onto his paddle and it turned out to be a dead Ringtail cat.

This one was a baby and looked a little different then the picture above being almost completely white and black. DeAnna was thoroughly grossed out and was an easy target for the rest of the trip about Ringtail jokes. At one point, we thought it might have gotten lodged under our raft as we floated down which really had DeAnna squirming since later in the day she had to dive under her raft to get it lined up on shore correctly.

That night we stayed at Bridge Canyon which is named for a archway in the stone.
The beach here was clean and there was a lot of space to spread out for both our group and a group whose guide, Brady, was a friend of our river guides. We shared cook space with Brady's group and he came to our rescue the next day when our stove was left on the shore.

At both our sites, the guides set up a toilet which I'll post about differently.

The menu for the first night was steak and salmon and brownies cooked in a dutch over. Not bad stuff.

Water falls

So there were multiple waterfalls that we got to see on the trip. Okay, some of us only got out of the boat for a couple of them, but there were a lot.

The most spectacular was at The Grotto in Tavertine Canyon. If you sneak down to the picture link below, you'll see Gary's photos of the grotto falls.

Raft Guide Knock Knock Joke

To understand this joke, you need to know that two of the Rock Layers of the Grand Canyon are called Supai and Tapeats.

"Knock knock"

"Who's there?"

"Supai"

"Supai who?"

"Supai the beer and I'll buy Tapeats-a"

That last bit is suppossed to sound like:
You buy the beer and I'll buy the Pizza (for those of you struggling with the joke).

Gary's pictures

Here's a few of Gary's pictures from the trip.

The wildlife

I think I expected to see more wildlife given the terrain that we covered, but my recollections were that we saw very little in general.

Of course, just because we didn't SEE a lot doesn't mean that it wasn't there. It was noted that there were several sets of tracks that converged on my sleeping area the second night. Probably a large family of ringtails trying to decide if I would make good eating.

There were a few sightings along the way.

Wild Burros -- I mentioned this previously, but when Burros were brought into the old west, they often out lasted the miners who brought them in and there are several groups (herds ?) of them in the Arizona desert.

Ringtail -- Okay so we only saw a dead ringtail, but it did follow our raft down the river the first day and lead to pleas from DeAnna to just "go away" and the great fear that he had gotten stuck under our raft.

Blue Heron aka Terradactal -- This is one of those birds that you just hope isn't carnivorous because it could carry a small child away. Really amazing looking.

Some red tip hawks ?

Red spotted toads -- For those of you who have ever read Louis L'Amour books, he likes to use the Red Spotted toad to help his characters lost in the desert know that they are near water (he did this in at least one short story and one novel I believe). Sure enough, we stopped one day to walk up this little tributary that fed into the river and the place was covered with them. They are only the size of a half dollar or so at most.

Some sort of fish -- okay someone help me out with the type of fish we saw on this same tributary. It was funny because when I first saw how many of the toads there were, I was thinking. Man, these toads need a predator. Then I saw how fat these fish were and I figured that they didn't get that big just eating mosquitos.

But the best nature sighting for my money was the duck.

As we were getting close to the end of the river portion of our trip and nearing the lake portion of the trip, we had switched over to using a motor and having all three rafts lashed together.

Out of nowhere there appears this adult duck that is going crazy. It looks hurt and and its cutting in front of us to the left and then to the right.

When we first saw it, the women on the boat were like "Oh the poor thing" and everyone was like "Oh, it's hurt", "Oh, it's confused", "Oh, it's psycho". Then someone else suggested that maybe it was just faking. Trying to lead us away from its nest as if we were some predator after its young.

And sure enough, a few minutes later, it "miraculously" was healed and it flew away in a wide semi-circle off to our left.

A mild apology about rocks

One discussion that you won't see on this blog (at least from me) is a discussion of which layer of rock was which .

Really, it's not the guides' fault in any of this. Rick, Josh, DeAnna -- all of them tried to educate us on the various layers, but I'm just not a rock kind of guy I guess.

About all that I walked away with was:

1) The top stuff is red.
2) The green stuff is Bright Angel shale and is several layers of dirt and mud that has turned into rock over the years.
3) At the end of the canyon, there's a half dozen faults and the rock has been tipped over on itself sort of in a J pattern.

That's it on rocks.

Guide Profiles: Josh

Josh Mac Naughton, Master Baker. Or at least that's what he prefers to be called.
There were multiple comments about how Josh would make someone a good wife someday given his ability to make a fruit plate that would be right at home in the finest of restaraunts. Everytime he'd cut something up, I'd think, yeah, that's exactly like it's suppossed to be cut. Maybe he should be a surgeon.

Josh on the other hand is majoring in "Outdoor Leadership" at NAU and will likely graduate after one more year. Armed with his degree, he hopes to push Rick into the river and take over leading the trips (just kidding). Actually, it will be a surprise to none of us if Josh does take up a similar kind of role in the future as he was very at home on the river.

Josh also works when he's not working at a hotel bar (I missed all the details here).

So basically, he's a man of many talents and many possible future roles:

1) Chef
2) Outdoor leader
3) Bartendar
4) Surgeon

Oh and I forgot cliff diver. Josh and Ryan spent a few minutes jumping off 15 to 20 foot jumps at one of our lake stops. Pretty cool stuff.

Guide Profiles: DeAnna

DeAnna Sanderson pretends to be a professional raft guide, but she's actually a shill for the water companies. I mean, this is a girl who could slip a line about needing to "Drink more water" while she is explaining her major of Geographic Information Systems or GIS at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

DeAnna is managing to cram this four year program into seven years. Wait, seven years. Is she a flake ? Does she have trouble with English course. No. While most students are content to study and fly through college, DeAnna has added to her resume for the future by taking off considerable time to fight fires all over the country while working for the National Forest Service.

In addition, DeAnna was responsible for making Mojitos ( rum, lemon, lime, mint ) on the river and quite a bit of the other cooking that went (although not as much as Josh of course). Another of the favorites was her homemade Guacamole and instead of plain old sour cream for fajitas, a mix of sour cream, plain yogurt, cummin, and silantro.

Now back to the water. How bad is DeAnna's water pushing ? (BTW, I personally think she gets kickbacks from all the water that former rafters of hers end up buying). I'm starting to drink seltzer water at home to increase my water intake. Sheesh.

Guide Profiles: Rick

You look down across the vast expanses of the river and down along the shoreline and see a man .... peeing into the river. That would be Rick. As Rick taught us, the reason that we all pee in the river on the trip is that Dilution is the solution to polution.

Rick Englehorn has been doing various outdoorsy types of things for nearly twenty years and he's the perfect trip leader to have. Rick spent a year sort of just wandering around the country and later cashed in on it working for many years as canyon guide, before going to work at Ft. Tuthill and working in their adventure department.

You may think that Rick is just a man who knows where to camp on the river, but he also has wonderful mysterys for you to solve. On this trip, he pulled out a story about a naked man who is found in the desert clutching a stick. It's all yes or no questions until you figure out who did it (there is actually a game of scenarios like this called Crack the Case).

Sorry for the lapse

Sorry for the lapse but as I've worked back into things, I've needed a bit mroe time than usual to get everything in order.

Getting There is Half the fun

I wasn't sure what to expect when we made this trip. It was, for instance, my first time on a western river. And it was my first time staying at a military recreational facility (since I'm not military).

I guess I was expecting a military base and of course that's NOT what Ft. Tuthill is. My first clue was the teenage girls running around with the tiaras on their head.

A few room features that you may or may not have encountered :
o Military issue air conditioners/purifiers/fans. These fans are standard issue for most aircraft .... to provide propulsion.

o The disappearing shampoo bottle (your mileage may vary if Jack wasn't your roommate)

o The trick lock on the outside door ( still a mystery how I ever got in my room. Ryan had the same problem I recall ).

The trip began innocently enough with some Pepsi and gatorade loaded on the van (the pepsi would be left in the van until our return -- just the first sign that Jack was out to get me [NOTE: for the humor impaired, that's a joke]). My gatorade was left at the bottom of the river thanks to a faulty carabine (sp?)

Once we had loaded up, Laurel, our official driver and (I should note) volunteer fire fighter, and our token guide (token in the van, not on the river), Josh Mac Naughton secured (relatively speaking) our dry bags to the roof of the van. With that we piled in and head for Peach Springs off of the original Route 66 joining the Colorado river between Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Several miles down we were starting to warm up to each other a bit when there was a loud snap followed by an even louder thump as one of the dry bags exited the vehicle!

Laurel quickly pulled over and backed up a bit. Josh jumped out and ran back and played dodge car while he ran across and picked up the bag and stood on the other side. Then waited and dodged back to our side. It turned out to be Ron's bag of course and apparently the only damage was his official "Ft. Tuthill" hot beverage mug.

That was the last of the adventures before the river except of course the next adventure. Joe was sitting in back thinking that the left rear tire sounded like it was out of balance when there was a loud THUNKA THUNKA THUNKA THUNKA .... the tread from the rear tire had torn away (although the tire didn't burst). In addition, the tire tread destroyed a part of the running board.

No problem. There's 12 of us. How hard could it be to change a tire ? Well that depends actually on a couple of cruicial details. The most crucial is CAN YOU GET THE REPLACEMENT TIRE OFF OF THE RACK that it's on ?

Nope ... not at first

Use the tire iron ? Yep .. doesn't fit

Use the tools in the van ? Yep ... none of the deep sockets fit and none of the short sockets are long enough.

Finally we make some progress when the 16 year old, Nick, produces a "tool" that can be used to get some leverage involved. Still having problems? Yep. Still having problems.

Ron suggests using bug spray which is used for lubricant.

What am I doing during all of this ? I'm having rock throwing contests with a 15 year old and eating cookies and chips and generally staying out of the way which is what I do best when there is serious work for three people and an extra nine or ten standing around.

Without further ado, we proceeded (with two bathroom / drink stops) to Peach Springs which is a small town on the Hualapai reservation. After our stop there we started into one of the many bonuses of this river trip -- free kidney stone treatment.

That's right. If you did show up for the raft trip with kidney stones, you were cured after forty-five minutes of pounding down the gravel road from Peach Springs out to the river.

We saw some wild burros on the drive down. These are remnants of burros that escaped from miners and other travelers back in the 1800s.

As we drove down the road, we also noticed that there was quite a bit of water on the road (I'd never rafted IN the van before) but we managed to stay on the road/stream until we reached the official jumping off point.

Most people's stuff was unloaded at that point in time, but my Pepsi and some of Frank's gatorade got stuck behind the jack (by Jack if you ask me) during our tire adventure.

Once we had carried our stuff to the river and visited Head Quarters (porta-potties set up nearby), we were ready to pull out onto the river.

Secured in the "sweep" boat with Jack and our raft guide DeAnna, I felt sure that I was ready for whatever the river had to offer. Ten feet later, I was proved wrong as Rico was out to see us off.

Bent over to cover himself, completely naked, Rico the River Ornament.

The Players

Here is a brief rundown of the players in our little adventure. Some of them will warrent expanded coverage later:

GUIDES
Rick Englehorn -- Trip Leader
Deanna Sanderson - Raft guide
Josh Mac Naughton -- Raft guide

ROAD CREW
Laurel -- Driver
Rico -- Raft inflator / naked river ornament

RAFTERS
Ron Chastain -- Former load master
Mary Ann Chastain -- Ron's better half (trust me)
Marsha Price -- Mary Ann's best friend

Frank Conley -- AF, retired -- organizer of the second group of rafters
Joe Conley -- Frank's brother
Nick Conley -- Joe's son
Ryan Conley -- Frank and Joe's nephew
Gary Cliser -- longtime friend of Frank and Joe's
Jack Redington -- a co-worker of mine and Frank's
Oz Ostby -- that's me .. I also work with Frank

River Life

Our guides instructed us on the various aspects of river life that were so crucial to understand:

1) pee in the river
2) poop in the box we brought
3) don't leave anything else behind to trash up the river

While this may be a gross way to start out the blog, it is definitely the truth. It is so beautiful out there on the river, that you just don't want to leave ANYTHING out there that will mess up the experience for anyone else.

Other things that you learn from your guide early on:

1) You will get wet
2) You are not drinking enough water (no matter how much you drink)

Thanks to the new additictions introduced to me by the raft guides, I just got done finishing off a 2 liter bottle of seltzer water and am halfway through a Propel.

Introduction

The purpose of this blog is to record some facts and stories related to a rafting trip that I took with some old friends and some new friends down the Colorado river and through part of the Grand Canyon.

If you were on the trip and would like to post something on this forum please email me at the email address that I passed out after we got back.

You can also reply to the posts that I make here. If any of you have posted your photos on the web, let me know and I can link to them from here as well.

In addition, I will probably be redirecting some of my friends to this site and your welcome to do so as well.

With that, I'll start by posting a couple of brief notes. I suspect that I'll be posting 1 or 2 things for a week or 2. When I'm done posting I'll make that clear.

Enjoy!

Oh .. one last note ... you have to read the posts from the bottom of the page if you want to start at the beginning. And, once we move past this month, you'll have to click on June to read those.

The Grand Canyon Blog

This blog is going to contain my posts about my recent Grand Canyon trip. If you were on the trip and would like to have me post something of yours, please email it.

Also, for those of you new to blogger, you may post anonymous comments if you wish as well.

Oz