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