My dad came to me with the idea of going to the Grand Canyon on an 8 day hiking, rafting, camping trip. The rest of my family was like heck no! (They needed showers and such.) I was like sign me up! I've never been to the Grand Canyon and to experience it from the inside of it, well that would be an amazing adventure. The group I was in was a group full of geologists with a family of 4 sprinkled in. Out of everyone in the group, there were about 5 chicks and the rest were guys. I wasn't worried. I knew I would have the time of my life. My group was amazing! The guys were older gentlemen, but so fun to hang out with. I learned a lot from them too. I was able to take a ton of pictures and bring all what I learned and the pictures back to my students for learning in the classroom.
Dad and I drove up to the Grand Canyon. It took us two days to get there. When we arrived, we made it there long before anyone else in our group showed up. We bought us some beer and climbed a whole bunch of rocks I'm pretty sure we weren't suppose to climb, and just sat there drinking and enjoying the view. This is a moment with my daddy I will never forget. Eventually that evening everyone showed up and we kind of just all hung out. There really wasn't an official name for our group; it was just a bunch of friends together on a once in a lifetime trip.
The next day we drove down to the water's edge and got on our very large rafting boats. The boats were loaded down with all of our gear, food, etc. I remember one of the boat drivers said, there were no toilets, you had to pee in the river. For some reason he said that straight at me. I naturally, just went along with it while on the inside in my mind I was like "Whoa did he just say that??? I have to do what??" It's ok. I played it cool. We had two boats for our group. There were these large extra rafts attached to the sides of the boats that looked like torpedoes. You were able to sit on these torpedoes while we went went rafting through rapids. At first, no one wanted to sit on those. But then, I got people to join me on the torpedoes later. This was a lot of fun! Especially when we went through the fifty something rapids! :o)
And so our Grand Canyon trip began. We started going down the river looking at the canyon from the inside. It was absolutely beautiful. All the geologists in the group knew what they were looking at. I just knew I was looking at one of God's beautiful creations and was speechless. We made various stops along the way looking at fossils and things like that. One of our stops was even where the Colorado River met the Grand Canyon river. The water was the prettiest blue I have ever seen. There was a natural water slide here. So of course I went down it! We also stopped along the way to do some hiking. One day we hiked over 6 miles. I saw some awesome things. And like I said, the guys on the trip answered all my questions I had. I think they were so happy someone other than a geologist was asking questions! I was like a sponge; trying to soak it all up. We saw some amazing waterfalls, and hiked up to the top of one of them. We also had the opportunity to jump off the top of one of the waterfalls. No one in my group wanted to do it-except me. It was on my Bucket List. So, I got in the very cold water, swam to the other side of the waterfall, climbed up the slippery rocks to the top of the waterfall, stood there to take it all in, and then jumped. It. Was. Awesome! After I did it, everyone else decided to do it. Trend starter? Nah! I'm just crazy wanting to experience it all. During one stop along the way, we stopped at a natural unconformity. This is like billions of years of nothing. The geologists were oogling over this and drooling and take pictures of themselves by this. The non-geologists in the group just stood out of their way and let them have some fun. One night I experienced my first real sand storm. Sand was flying everywhere. I'm sure I ate a ton of it. I remember going to sleep and having to cover up my whole head so sand wouldn't go in my mouth, nose, and ears while I slept. I just told my group to kindly unbury me in the morning. The second to last day we stopped at another part of the Colorado River with the pretty blue water. We got some time to play in that. This was when I broke my leg. Yep. I broke my leg down in the Grand Canyon. This is an adventure all to itself. The next day, we were all helicoptered out of the Grand Canyon (I got to ride shot gun!), took the best shower of my life, and by then it was time to head home. On the way home, dad and I stopped at Sandia Peak in Albuquerque. The views there were gorgeous!
At night in the Grand Canyon, we would all sit in a large circle and just talk and drink beer. It was a fabulous thing. I mean who can say they have done that in the Grand Canyon? We were on what we called river time. You went to sleep when it was dark (it could've been 8 at night for all we knew) and you woke up at light (again, it could have been 5 in the morning). You could pitch a tent and sleep in that at night. I didn't want to, because I didn't want to miss a thing. I just put out my sleeping bag right there on the sand bar, and fell asleep staring at the stars with the gentle noises from the rapids as my background sound. There were bats flying around, gihugic lizards, ants, snakes, etc. That never bothered me. I couldn't let that bother me. I would have missed out on so much. I cannot even begin to describe what it is like sleeping under the stars like that. This is just something someone has to experience themselves. What an amazing thing. Simply priceless.
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