Our launch day is not until tomorrow so today was spent getting everything finalized and getting in place to take off in the morning. We went out to breakfast in Flagstaff, dropped one car off at Moenkopi, then the 5 of us piled in Spencer's jeep and headed up to Lee's Ferry where we would be leaving from. Upon arrival at Lee's Ferry we met up with the last 2 people to join our group (making us 7 strong), Dan and Torrey. Until yesterday, Kate and I had been under the impression that Torrey was a girl, luckily it came up before actually meeting him that Torrey was a guy... Dan is a friend of Aaron's whom I had met a couple of times before and Torrey is a friend of Dan's from high school. I can tell right away that Torrey is going to be quite entertaining, he is from the bay area and so excited to be out on this adventure with his old buddy Dan and this rag-tag bunch of firefighters (that is the common bond that the other 5 of us share). We spend the rest of the day getting the rafts completely outfitted, which turns out to be quite the process. Spencer and Aaron seem to have the set up down and the rest of us are running around trying to find a way to help and figuring out the set-up. I feel like staying out of the way would have been a bit more helpful at this point, but I felt the need to figure out where things went so that I could help with camp set up and break down throughout the trip (I have a sneaking suspicion that Dan, Torrey, Gary, and Kate felt the same way). After getting the rafts outfitted we went through an inspection with Peggy, the Ranger on duty. She basically came, made fun of our life jackets, signed off that we had what we needed, then told us to meet her for orientation the next morning. After this we floated the rafts about 30 feet down the river and set up our first camp. This is a whole lot different than what I am used to... There is a full kitchen with a cast iron dutch oven and pan, plates, bowls, mugs, and silverware for everyone! My mind is blown at the setup for this trip, this is going to be luxury camping for sure!!
Left: Peggy hassling Spencer...
Right: The 7 of us all outfitted for our first day on the river.
January 11th through January 18th
During this first week, we had all 7 people. We started off with the orientation from Peggy, one of the first questions was if everyone watched 'the video'... I had definitely not watched any video, however I was not going to admit to this, figuring that I would just have the boys catch me up later. However, Torrey had no problem saying that he had not seen it. Later on, I confessed to Torrey that I hadn't actually watched 'the video' either, then Kate and Gary admitted that they had not watched it... pretty funny that only one of us was willing to admit this to Peggy.
After orientation, we finally got on the river!! It really is impossible to explain how incredible rafting the Grand Canyon is. We were all blessed enough to spend every hour of every day among one of the wonders of the world! Not only that, but since it was winter, during this first week (and actually for the entire 25 days) we only saw 2 other groups that were out on the river, one was a group doing scientific research, and the other was an international group.
Highlights of the first week for me were:
Pack-rafting the roaring 20's (from mile 20-30 there are a lot of rapids). I did end up swimming a lot of the rapids but I had a lot of fun in the pack raft and started to figure out how to use it.
Silver Grotto: I am pretty sure every one of us would consider this a highlight. Silver Grotto was a side hike out of one of our first camps. This hike included rock climbing and swimming through some awesome little pools, and basically just playing around jumping from rocks, sliding down them, all while wearing our dry suits.
Torrey telling Sheila stories: This is not really something that I can explain, but we would sit around the fire and each read a page about John Powell's first trip down the Colorado. When the book would get to Torrey, he would just jump into a ridiculous story about a woman named Sheila, an impressive skill to say the least, and he would do all this while looking at the page of the rather dry book that we were reading.
Listening to music as we floated along calm sections.
Aaron's menu: The food for the entire trip was simply amazing, Aaron put a lot of work into prepping the meals! One of my favorites during the first week had to be the cornbread made in the dutch oven with homemade chili.
The Little Colorado River: This river was a crazy shade of blue, we spent a couple hours hiking up it one day and just enjoying the scenery... I will probably go back and hike down this river someday!
Cranium Games: A couple nights in we decided to play cranium "green boat vs. black boat". For some reason black boat managed to beat green boat every single time, which led to my conclusion that cranium is an incredibly stupid game! Can you guess which boat I was on:)
Left: Peggy hassling Spencer...
Right: The 7 of us all outfitted for our first day on the river.
January 11th through January 18th
During this first week, we had all 7 people. We started off with the orientation from Peggy, one of the first questions was if everyone watched 'the video'... I had definitely not watched any video, however I was not going to admit to this, figuring that I would just have the boys catch me up later. However, Torrey had no problem saying that he had not seen it. Later on, I confessed to Torrey that I hadn't actually watched 'the video' either, then Kate and Gary admitted that they had not watched it... pretty funny that only one of us was willing to admit this to Peggy.
After orientation, we finally got on the river!! It really is impossible to explain how incredible rafting the Grand Canyon is. We were all blessed enough to spend every hour of every day among one of the wonders of the world! Not only that, but since it was winter, during this first week (and actually for the entire 25 days) we only saw 2 other groups that were out on the river, one was a group doing scientific research, and the other was an international group.
Highlights of the first week for me were:
Pack-rafting the roaring 20's (from mile 20-30 there are a lot of rapids). I did end up swimming a lot of the rapids but I had a lot of fun in the pack raft and started to figure out how to use it.
Silver Grotto: I am pretty sure every one of us would consider this a highlight. Silver Grotto was a side hike out of one of our first camps. This hike included rock climbing and swimming through some awesome little pools, and basically just playing around jumping from rocks, sliding down them, all while wearing our dry suits.
Torrey telling Sheila stories: This is not really something that I can explain, but we would sit around the fire and each read a page about John Powell's first trip down the Colorado. When the book would get to Torrey, he would just jump into a ridiculous story about a woman named Sheila, an impressive skill to say the least, and he would do all this while looking at the page of the rather dry book that we were reading.
Listening to music as we floated along calm sections.
Aaron's menu: The food for the entire trip was simply amazing, Aaron put a lot of work into prepping the meals! One of my favorites during the first week had to be the cornbread made in the dutch oven with homemade chili.
The Little Colorado River: This river was a crazy shade of blue, we spent a couple hours hiking up it one day and just enjoying the scenery... I will probably go back and hike down this river someday!
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