Colorado River Float Trip (5/15/07)

The float trip started at the Glen Canyon Dam - which is now a national security site, so we had to put all our backpacks on a separate truck when we got to the gate, and then our bus took us down through a two mile tunnel through the rocks to the base of the dam. Later, on the river, we could see the adits ("windows") into the tunnel sloping down from the top of the cliff where we started to just above the river. There is no lighting in the tunnel except the adits every so often, which also let in air, and were used to push out the excavated rocks from the tunnel.

When we got to the base, they gave us all hard hats to wear to the rafts, since we were walking under the bridge over the river, and people sometimes through pennies off - 700 feet directly over our heads. While MythBusters recently proved that unlikely to be fatal, I think it would probably hurt, so I didn't mind the hard hat!

There were dinosaur tracks in the rock at the bottom of the ramp, or at least very good replicas - they looked just like the tracks in the stone over at Tuba City. Sort of like giant ostrich tracks with 3 toes.

Our guide's name was Kelli, and she was more into history than natural history, which is okay with me since I know the natural history pretty well, having spent two weeks in a Geology of the Colorado Plateau honors field class, along with all my other geology, botany, ecology, desert ecology, etc classes and all the reading I've done, too! But Kelli focused on John Wesley Powell and his trip down this same river, showed us places where he climbed to the top, or waterpockets where he got fresh water (back then, before the dam, the Colorado was so muddy it was said to be "too thick to drink, too thin to plow"!). We also heard stories of his journey, saw formations he had named from his perspective, like Monk Rock. We stopped at some petroglyphs, went around the famous "Horseshoe Bend," saw nesting herons, ducklings, and white-faced Ibis along the river. Heard Canyon Wrens and Swifts, and in the deep shade of a canyon wall, saw a bat overhead so clearly you could see its "fingers" in its wing!

It was a nice day on the river, but one thing that was too bad is that they wouldn't let us hop on a bus from Lee's Ferry where we were camped and then take the raft back "home," saving us 2 hours of driving. The bus companies are all different contractors, I guess, and they said the one from that morning was full, anyway. So we had to drive into Page, float down the river to Lee's Ferry, get bused back to Page, and drive back to Lee's Ferry. We had dinner at Stromboli's in Page and got back after dark, pretty tired!!

For information on Glen Canyon Colorado River Float Trips, go to www.raftthecanyon.com