Our 5th day of vacation started early.. I mean EARLY! We had to be in the downstairs lobby by 330am to catch our ride. This ride turned out to be a questionable driver in a van. We picked up several other passengers, stopped for a question coffee / breakfast and then we were on the road. Little did we know that this drive was a three hour tour (During which the drive took out a pair of binoculars to use to look for cops as he was driving) to the Reservation where we would transfer to a school bus with 40 of our closest friends to ride another 1.5 hours down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Now, had this expectation been set by the tour company it wouldn't have been so bad, but an unexpected ride of this length at 330am was not very pleasant.
About 1/2 through the school bus ride the scenery started to get pretty and this made the the ride more pleasant. Once we were finally at the bottom we were divided up into groups and assigned to a boat. Now we thought this was going to be boats that we had to paddle in but as it turns out we were actually in motorized pontoon boats. This was probably a really good thing since we had to go through rapids rated up to 7+. After getting our life jackets on and loading up the boats we were ready to start the day. Now I realize that the water in the Colorado river is run off from the mountains but... We were in Nevada... It was like 110 degrees outside... Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined the water would be that cold! We hit the first rapid and holy cow! Water came all the way over the top of the pontoon and we were instantly frozen. This continued off and on for about the first two hours of the trip. The rapids were cool and fun to go through but man the water was cold. It wasn't as bad after the initial shock, but still cold.
The scenery was beautiful on the trip. We made two stops along the way. The first one was at a waterfall that you can only see from the bottom of the canyon. The guides had ropes set up along this path so you could climb up right by the falls. It was amazing. The second stop was for lunch where we got to get out of the boats and find a place in the warm sun to eat lunch. Again, when you stop to think about it it was completely amazing. Here we are at the bottom of the Grand Canyon having lunch. How many people can say they have ever done anything like that.
The second half of the trip was just floating down the river. During this time it would have been really nice to have had some of the cold water splashing up on us. It got really hot and we did our best to continue to enjoy the beautiful scenery, but I have to admit the trip could have been over about 1-2 hours before it was and that would have been fine with us. Once the boat ride was over we were scheduled to take a helicopter ride back to the top of the canyon. Again, the tour company could have provided more information here and it would have made for a more pleasant experience. Because of problems with one of the helicopters we had to wait about two hours for our ride. I would have paid hundreds of dollars for a pair of clean shorts and a book.
The helicopter ride was a great way to end the trip. We can now say that we saw the Grand Canyon from the top, the bottom and from a helicopter. Amazing. Here are our digital photos of the trip. I'll have a few more once the CDs from the water proof cameras are done.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment