Grand Canyon Sampler

In April of 1992, my wife of twenty years decided to "find herself"; and she decided to start the search without me. Our separation was a mutual choice and led me to two conclusions. One: I could do stuff I never could before, like take extended camping trips. And, two: I should make these trips with each of my kids. Previously, everything had to include everyone; and, since I had four kids, this was usually a prohibitively expensive proposition. One kid at a time, on the other hand, was often do-able. I decided to kick all this off with a three-day rafting trip through Grand Canyon. The company I chose is called O.A.R.S., which stands for Outdoor Adventure River Specialists. (They did such a good job, I have used them for three subsequent Grand Canyon rafting trips!)

Originally my son, John, was supposed to go on this first trip. As the youngest, he often wound up going last; so I thought, this time, I'd let him be first. But the dates I had reserved, which were perfect for him when he lived in Florida (where my ex-wife moved when we separated) conflicted with his summer school in Virginia (where she moved after Florida). So my oldest daughter, Dorothy, "lucked out" and became the grand prize winner.

She arrived in Manchester, NH, where I lived, from Virginia on Tuesday, July 28th; I picked her up and went back to work. The next afternoon we left Boston and flew to Las Vegas' McCarron Airport. We didn't have to change planes but the plane we were in did land at Philadelphia to drop off and pick up some other passengers. The good part of that was that we got two dinners. The bad part of that is that Dottie didn't like either one of them. But I did!

We got to McCarron airport a little later than planned, after 11 p.m. Las Vegas time—about 2 a.m. by our internal clocks. And then we had to wait nearly an hour for the motel shuttle to arrive to take us to the Westward Ho. There was a guy and his wife also waiting for the shuttle. He couldn't relax. He paced back and forth, back and forth, muttering about how long it was taking (although the motel told him what time the shuttle would arrive when he called). Finally he suggested that he and I share the cost of a taxi to the motel. He seemed quite miffed that I wasn't as upset over taking an additional twenty minutes to get to the motel slot machines as he was.

The motel only cost $29.00 a night. It was clean and adequate, and the beds were comfortable enough. We didn't get to enjoy it for long because we had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. in order to get back to the airport in time to meet the representative of Lake Mead Air. The motel shuttle took us back to McCarron. It took us a while to find the O.A.R.S. representative, but eventually we did—after walking from one end of the airport to the other. At that, we weren't the last of our group to arrive.

We all piled into a van and drove to a little, private airport about a half-hour away. It looked like a parking lot for derelict aircraft, but we split up and got into three of them and took off.

This was Dottie's first trip in a small plane since she was very little. It was pleasant; the scenery was breathtaking. We flew over Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, the lake created by the dam. Lake Mead, at over two hundred miles in length, is the largest man-made lake in the world.

Whitmore Wash

We finally landed at the Bar-10 Ranch at the north rim of the Grand Canyon. At the end of the dirt runway on which we landed was a hand-carved sign reading "Whitmore International Airport—Main Concourse—Gate AA."

While waiting for our helicopter, I purchased some postcards, applied the computer-printed labels and stamps I had brought with me, and got started on writing them. Dottie helped. I felt so prepared.

The helicopter ride was very gentle, smoother than an elevator. We flew low over the rolling sagebrush and cactus, then suddenly fell over the edge of a crevasse. The Grand Canyon!

We landed at a beach called Whitmore Wash. Besides OARS' five yellow rafts, there were two large, blue, motorized rafts belonging to another company. All the raft tours run the entire Canyon, about a two-week trip (less for the motorized rafts, of course). Not everyone can spend two weeks on the river; so OARS offers a variety of trip lengths. On several of them, the rafts stop at Whitmore Wash, send their previous passengers to the Bar-10, and receive a new batch. This time, the new batch included ourselves.

It took a little while to get ourselves organized. For one thing, the helicopter could only carry four passengers at a time. But finally we got in our rafts and pushed off.

Each raft held one "river guide" and four passengers. Dottie and I were in the lead raft. The other passengers were named Mike and Mary Ann. Our river guide was Robby, the "trip organizer" or "T.O.".

We floated a mile or so while Robby gave us some tips on river safety. Then we pulled in at a beach which stood in the shade of a huge, overhanging cliff. Rob said this provided the only noontime shade for many, many miles. He and the other guides set up a table with sausage, cold cuts, cheeses, whole-grain breads, and watermelon. This set the tone for the meals on the rest of the trip: gourmet, all the way.

There were no serious rapids that day, so I asked Rob if I could row. He let me, for about three hours. I was able to take us through a couple of little rapids with no problem. Rob said I was a "natural." I figured he told this to everyone, but the next day Mike rowed for about an hour, struggling as we bobbed along from one side of the river to the other. Rob just sat with a frozen smile and took over before we got to a rapid milder than the ones I had navigated.

Locations along the river in the Canyon are named by the number of miles from the start of the Canyon, a place called Lee's Ferry. We had "put in" at Whitmore Wash, at Mile 188. About twenty miles later we landed at a beautiful beach called, simply, Mile 202. It looked like every planet the Robinsons ever landed on in the TV series, Lost in Space. There were a couple of shallow caves in one cliff, and a high area I walked up to, to get a view of the whole camp.

Dinner was barbecue chicken, white and wild rice, cooked carrots, broccoli and cauliflower, and coleslaw. For desert, they made brownies, very light, fluffy ones, topped with whipped cream.

Hot Summer Night

It was very hot, and a storm came up. There was a smattering of rain and we hurried to erect our tents. None of the other fourteen passengers knew how to set up these tents, which were similar to the dome tents I've had for the past several years. Because we expected rain, we put cloth flies over the tents. These also held in the heat, but they did protect us from the sand being blown about by the wind.

To be honest, that first night was so hot, it wasn't very pleasant. But sometime after midnight, the wind died down and the stars came out. I removed the fly from our tent, cooling it down considerably. I then took a dip in the river.

The Colorado, whose name means "colored", used to be a ruddy brown color all the time. In August, it also ran warm and a little sluggish. But ever since the Glen Canyon Dam was erected a few miles upstream of Lee's Ferry, the water is usually blue-green and cool—about 55°. August is monsoon season, and there had been a good deal of rain upstream before Dottie and I got there. So the water was a silty brown which stained my white shorts tan—I still haven't got them quite white again. But the water was still cool, and felt terrific on such a hot night.

The river guides took turns cooking each meal. For breakfast that meant they had to get up around 5 a.m. By 7 a.m. most of us were up, too. Mike, our rafting partner, had not had a pleasant night. No one had told him that removing the tent fly after the storm was over would be a good idea. In fact, none of the visitors knew this; ours was the only tent without a fly that morning. (The guides sleep on their rafts and have canopies, not tents.) Mike was ready to leave right then, but of course he couldn't. None of us could. In a case of medical emergency, a helicopter could rescue one of us but that was the only exception. Mike was trapped on the river until we reached our take-out point a day-and-a-half later.

Day Two

This didn't mean I was disappointed. As I told Rob the day before: the camping, the beauty of the Canyon, the joy of drifting down the river—all these made the trip worthwhile to me. I had been bit by the Canyon bug, and no rapids could have made it better.

At lunch time we landed at a spot called Pumpkin Spring at Mile 213. This is a bowl made of sulfur-laden limestone that, when the river is lower, looks like the bottom half of a pumpkin. Dottie and I poked our legs into it. It was warm but not hot; I think it was just heated by the sun.

After lunch we napped for an hour or so, then crossed to the other side of the river for a little hike up to the remains of a cabin 1000 feet up the side of the Canyon. In the 1930s, a Mormon hid there from his six wives, who were trying to kill him for cheating on them! After that, he must have found the effort of climbing up the side of the Canyon to his cabin to be child's play. There was a fresh water spring near his cabin; we let the water drip on us and drank hatsful of it. The Grand Canyon is a desert environment, in spite of the river. A very real danger is that of dehydration. The guides were always after us not to forget to drink. We each carried a water bottle and were supposed to sip from it constantly. That was OK, but bottled water gets to tasting a little stale after a while; so the spring water was a real treat.

In fact, we were running low on water. So Rob had us stop in the shade of a great overhang while he and most of the other guides hiked to Three Spring to get some more. (We could use river water, but it was so silty it kept clogging the filters they used to make it drinkable.) I was almost tempted to go with them, but instead I jumped in the water to cool off. Then I swam to a rock ledge and climbed onto it. The ledge was barely above water level and was covered with a two-inch thick layer of mud.

I've got to tell you about the Canyon mud. It isn't just icky mud. It's more like beauty parlor mud, the kind they put on women's faces. It's thick and smooth and very relaxing. So I just kind of vegged out on the ledge until the guides came back.

They gave us the chance to take Three Spring Rapids by ourselves—just floating down it wearing life jackets. Four of the passengers did it and had a great time, but I was still cooled off after my swim and didn't bother.

By now it was again up to 110°; so the ride through the Mile 217 rapids that afternoon was a pleasant diversion. This is rated a seven (on a 1 to 10 scale), so we got a little wet. It still wasn't scary. But a private party going through the Canyon at about the same time, didn't have Rob's expertise. They flipped their raft and lost an expensive camera they had neglected to tie down.

That night we camped at Mile 220, another great beach. This time no storm threatened and, once the sun set, a cooling breeze blew on down the Canyon. We ate filet mignon, lentil pilaf, and had fresh-baked carrot cake and whipped cream for desert.

There was one complete family on the trip, husband and wife and their son and daughter. Dottie and I thought that the kids were in their early teens, but it turned out that the son was 17 and the daughter was in college. After dinner they never did anything; they just sat quietly and stared at the river while the rest of us talked, explored or played horseshoes. We began to refer to them as "The Stepford Family."

There was also a guy who was about fifty, at least 250 pounds, with a beard to his waist and the hair shaved an inch above his ears to make room for his tattoos. He looked exactly like a  member of ZZ Top, but he turned out to be a neat guy. He knew way more about the constellations than I do, and spent an hour pointing them out to us.

You've never seen the stars so brilliant. There were so many of them, they actually drowned out some of the usual constellations. The Milky Way spilled across the sky like real milk. The stars were even brighter than they are in Vermont. They were so thick you could see them occluded by bats, swooping and flitting to get their fill of insects. Flying insects never bothered us, though, although I did get one red ant bite at Pumpkin Spring that hurt for days.

That night, after we talked with each other for a couple of hours, we laid out on our sleeping bags under the stars and stared at them until we dozed off.

Day Three

The next thing we knew it was morning, and time for eggs, bacon, English muffins, and melons. Mike had had a better night than the previous one, but he still wasn't happy. He didn't like the sand. When I suggested that he wash off in the river, he said he didn't like the river water. He also didn't like sleeping on the ground, being exposed to so much sunlight, sitting in the raft, or hiking. I asked why he had come, and he said his wife "made" him. She, incidentally, was having a great time, except for having to listen to her husband complain.

This was the last day, and it was over much too soon. Diamond Creek, at Mile 226, is where almost all the rafting tours "take out." When we got there it was like a circus. There must have been twelve or fourteen rafts partially pulled up onto the sand, being unloaded, taken apart, washed and deflated. As guests, we didn't have to help but we all did anyway. No matter what, it would have been better than standing in the sun, watching. But for me it was part of the experience, a way to keep the vacation from ending quite so soon.

After the gear had been stowed in the trucks and vans, we had our last lunch and stood together for group photos. Then we boarded the van to head for the Canyon rim.

Diamond Creek is on an Indian reservation. Typically, the Hualapai were given the least valuable land possible and told to stay there. They are used to desert living, but this land offered little in the way of places to grow food or graze animals. But then they lucked out. In the 1970s, rafting became popular, and Diamond Creek was the best place to take out at the end of a river run. So the Hualapai charge $16.50 per person, and per vehicle, to use their road to get from the Canyon to the highway. I've never been happier to pay a toll. (Which, incidentally, was paid by OARS, the rafting company, from the cost of the trip.)

The trip to Las Vegas was done in that van, with all fourteen of us aboard. It took about four hours, including the hour from the Canyon to the Hualapai village. I dozed for part of it, but when I woke the scenery was so spectacular I couldn't go back to sleep. We drove right over Hoover Dam; the road makes use of the dam itself as a bridge to cross the Colorado.

Until Next Time...

River guides do not make much money. But Rob and the others didn't seem to care. "You have to get bit by the bug early," Rob said, "before you have any commitments." Rob was 31 and had been running the river since he was seventeen. He said he couldn't imagine doing anything else. Scotty, our guide on the third day, was married and had a three-year-old girl he loved very much...but his real life was on the river. He couldn't wait until his daughter is sixteen or so and can go on river trips with him.

It's so clean and natural down there. After we got back, we had to return to the airport. Dottie was flying out first, so we stopped at McDonald's for a quick dinner before her flight. I drove through the traffic—not that bad, really—and followed the stop lights and signs and lines on the road. It all seemed so surreal. Life in the Canyon seemed so honest. There's something about the experience, about floating between these huge, cathedral-like monuments of stone, that strips pretense away and leaves nothing behind that isn't real. The layers of stone in the walls of the Canyon each reveal a different age of the Earth. The lowest layer, the Vishnu Schist, is 1.8 billion years old. Somehow, looking at that layer, and the layers above it, all combining in such an exquisite tapestry—somehow it all puts things in perspective. Bush and Clinton, traffic, McDonald's...they're all such transient things, relatively unimportant. By comparison, the Canyon is forever.

No wonder I knew, then, I would keep coming back.