We started off downstream, getting a closer look at the poison ivy first thing in the morning.
Esther was more enthralled with a backward glimpse of our campsite:
I was in Sarah's raft this time. Over the course of the day, she read to us from a guidebook about the Colorado River and asked us to tell jokes or embarrassing stories to help pass the time. Five minutes in to the journey, Helen seems to have had a long day of it already:
Ryan, though not paddling, remains alert:
About a mile later, we made our first stop: Redwall Cavern. Sarah made us promise not to look back to the entrance of the cave until we were all the way at the back. (She didn't say what the penalty was, but I got the sense it might have to do with pillars of salt.) So instead, I looked down and saw some animal tracks in the soft sand. I think I overheard someone say they were mouse tracks, but I'll defer to the experts out there:
This is the kind of view you get when you turn around:
Everyone went crazy with the picture-taking:
The light and curvature are a siren song to the photographers:
This picture probably helps give a sense of the size of the cavern:
To get an even better sense of it, consider this. Anywhere between 5 to 10 of us batted a beach ball around for a while in a big circle. (So much fun, but really thirsty work because our aim wasn't so good. Freddy was one of the die-hards in the game; not only is he a serious volleyball player, but he also has some fancy soccer moves.) Then other rafting groups joined us, setting up frisbee and other group games in the cave - and it didn't get crowded.Further downstream, we went on a hike or two. Here's Julie preparing her ascent for a short mid-day hike:
And a view from below, as Stella enters the same rock formation. Note that this opening is formed by four giant boulders balanced against each other. Luckily, nobody sneezed.
The rocks were a bit different here. I liked this because it looked like poorly mortared bricks:
Here's David among a boulder-strewn path. He's in the center of the picture, you can see him if you look carefully.
Closeup of the prickly pear cactus, which allegedly makes good jam. That was one of the few delicacies our guides failed to bring or make for us, so I can neither confirm nor deny that statement:
After we set up camp, we went on a second hike bound for a fountain up a side canyon. The ascent was steep in places, and we reached a place where we had to wade in the water. It seemed kind of biblical, like a kind of baptism. A painful one for those of us who decided to do it barefoot:
On the way back, Kathy and I got separated from the crowd and lost the path. In true Darwinian fashion, we should probably have been set upon by coyotes and devoured or something, but we were pretty sure that the general direction to take was "down" and we also had a hunch that the dry stream bed we were following might just possibly make its way to the Colorado River somehow. Elliot found us and the three of us followed the stream bed for a while.
When we rejoined the main path (whew!) we found a clump of grasses near the bathing area in which there was a certain rustle of movement.... A diamondback rattlesnake!!! My second in two weeks. It was pale desert rock colors, obviously in a diamond pattern. Sort of a desert argyle. But it was less than 3 feet long, and it didn't shake its rattle at us, so it didn't seem very menacing. I am sorry to report that Elliot was somewhat critical of the creature's dovelike nature (he seemed to feel that snakes should be hawks). Fortunately for all of us, it slithered away before he could rattle its cage so to speak. There is no photographic record of this snake, however, so I look forward to hearing Elliot's version of the story in a few years. Hopefully we will just narrowly escape with our lives.
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