Day 21

We woke up at the early hour of 6 AM (on purpose this time!) to join our rafting tour down the Glen Canyon. We packed everything up, and were almost finished when a father in the campground started shouting his daughter's name (we'll call her Michaela, to protect her identity). He soon had all the mothers in the campground searching for his lost child, along with the rest of his family. He was constantly shouting, "Michaela!", and "Has anyone seen a small child?!" He quit after about 3 or 4 minutes of this. It seems that the child in question was in the back seat of the truck they were in the whole time. He soon apologized to the campground for the disturbance. He looked pretty angry, so I'm sure that Michaela will not do that again.

We hit the road to the rafting centre after that disaster was averted. We boarded buses, and drove down to the Davis Dam, where this tour company launches from. It's one of the few places on the Colorado River that you can launch from. Grand Canyon raft tours last anywhere from 3 to 16 days because there is nowhere to pick the people up in the canyon. Although one company offers a one day raft excursion that ends with a pickup with a helicopter. Very expensive. So we decided to take the Glen Canyon trip and see what that had to offer.

To acces our launch point, we had to drive down a 2-mile long tunnel in the side walls of the canyon. This tunnel was protected by National Security and apparently only this company and the employees of National Security canuse it. We felt pretty special. At the bottom, we were directly underneath the highway crossing bridge, so we had to don helmets while in the area, in case people threw stuff. We boarded our rafts right beside the dam, and we set off down the canyon. Now we encounter some pretty interesting people on our travels and there was a family of 5 on our trip who definately stood out among the group, especially the 7 year old, Elliot.

Gorgeous views and cool air greeted us during the first part of the tour. With it being a deep canyon, the sun wouldn't warm it up down there until noon, and the water coming out the dam was getting drawn from the bottom of Lake Powell, so it was really cold water. Elliot refused to sit on the side of the boat (the best spot) and proceded to sit with us who got on the boat last in the middle of the boat seats. Elliot was front and center swinging his knees and enjoying himself.

We took a break about halfway through the raft tour on a secluded beach that had a little trail up to some ancient petroglyphs made by the Pueblo Indians who ihabited the area over a thousand years ago. Very cool stuff! As we were approaching our stop, the guide said very loudly and clearly, "There will be a bump when we land". Elliot, who we think might exist in another world, or possibly dimension did not hear this at all. As we were all looking towards the shore, we hit the bump, which was followed by a loud thump. Elliot had hit the deck pretty hard and our arrival was punctuated by the loud thump as all of his 7 year old body hit the floor of the boat pretty hard. No one has seen him fall, but we all felt pretty bad when he started to cry. Fortunately he was okay, but unimpressed by the petroglyphs.

We boarded again, and as we went further and further down, the canyon started to widen up and become more hilly, rather than a deep gorge. Elliot started the ride on the side of the boat with his family, but when his dad tried to have him put his leg over (we were allowed to) that was enough of that. Elliot slid down to sit next to Brett. He quickly became fascinated with Brett's tattoo and spent about 5 minutes closely looking at it. Elliot then spent the rest of the trip doubled over looking at the floor of the boat. His mom caught Rhonda's look of concern and asked Elliot what was wrong. He stated, that he "Had to go to the bathroom". Needless to say, Elliot did not have very much fun on this trip. We ended the tour at Lees Ferry, an old ferry site that marks the end of Glen Canyon and is the eastern border of the Grand Canyon National Park. We boarded the buses and took a 45 minute drive back to Page, AZ. To sum it up, both Rhonda and Brett agree that Elliot needs to be a better listener. LOL

Rhonda and I hopped in the truck, and after a quick detour to the Walmart for some supplies, we were soon on the road to Utah and Bryce Canyon. After driving for about 2 hours, we found the road to Bryce Canyon, entered the park with our annual park pass, and set off to... well, where should we go? We looked at the map, and decided on Bryce Point, one of the many lookouts into the canyon.

Some spectacular rock formations greeted us as we approached the point, and they only got better as we headed further up. After enjoying the view for a while, we hit the truck, and found a public washroom. It was around this time that Brett noticed that Rhonda was experiencing some discomfort. Time to find a campsite for the evening!

We drove further up the road to our planned destination, which was a state park by a lake. When we got there, it looked more like a gravel pit with an outhouse. No way were we staying there! We drove further up the road and toured around a potential spot at an RV park. The funny thing was that EVERYBODY had a quad ATV. What's up with that? Anyways, this site was way too much like a parking lot. We pressed on, up to Rock Candy Mountain. We found home for the night in another privately owned RV park, and it was there that we discovered that there's a big ATV rally in the area that weekend.

As we pulled into our site, we found a nice secluded area for the tent, access to the river with a fire pit down there, but no picnic table. Thank goodness for the portable kitchen! It was the second time we had pulled it out on the trip (the first being our first night of the trip, and we only set it up for the cool gadget factor). We dined on bacon, eggs, and toast; nothing like breakfast for dinner! Rhonda went to bed right after supper and Brett sat by the fire until it refused to burn. It was an early night.

All in all, we put about 450 km's on the truck today, and everybody's still in the truck.