Duffy was greeting us this morning with his colorful hat.

Ann was in the tent.  My shoes were near the corner of the tent and still a bit wet.

How many times do you get to wake up to this?

Ann is  getting ready for the day….

… and Ken and Audrey are almost packed up.

I love this photo Ken took of their neoprene socks and shoes.  Quoting Ken, “There’s nothing like slipping into wet neoprene socks and dripply shoes to start the day! ”

Personally the neoprene socks and gloves were one of my very best purchases for this trip.

We all have breakfast together.

I love the duck tape that Sue Tanges gave to Dave to repair his rain suit.

Emily started us off with a story – not a great photo of her but a memory.

Sue started us with lessons.  She gets even colder than I do so she is totally bundled up for the day.

We have loaded the rafts and are ready tp go.

Ken is already taking photos.

We are entering a rapid and are happy to see the sunshine on the rocks ahead.

Here comes Duffy’s raft through the rapids.

They are all bundled-up.

The river must have been very high to wash up whatever is on that rock.

Emily always had such a great attitude.

Ken took a photo of the outboard motor within the raft, inside the rear “donut.”

He also took this photo of Bunny, Pat, and me admiring the “Awe-inspiring, (Ken’s words) sites.

Ken and I both took photos of Vassie’s Paradise Waterfall.  The rocks are covered with beautiful moss and ferns.  It was named Vassies in honor of a botanist that traveled on the river last year.

 

People who ride in the front of the raft get the wettest but most exciting ride.

Ann decided to rest for a bit.

When we stopped for lunch, we walked to the back of Redwall Cavern to take a couple of photos looking out.

Our geologist, Sue. pointed out fossils in the rocks.

Using a hand helps show the size.

How is that rock just sitting there.  I wonder when it is going to fall.

Our crew prepared lunch….

… then Emily demonstrated how to fold the tortilla into a cone to contain our salad and Kersten showed us how to fill it.

It was delicious.

We came to a small rapid….

… and held up afterwards so we could film Duffy’s raft coming through it.

Some people brought beers that they hand them off the back of the raft in a mesh bag.  Sue is enjoying hers.

More Agave.

And fantastic sights.

 

I wish I could remember what Sue told us about this.

We made it to mile 52 and stopped to cam at Main Nankoweap.  Duffy took a group of us on a hike up several hundred feet along a steep trail.  He pointed out this foot-bridge tucked into the rocks.  It had been created by the Ancient people

The views were spectacular…

Especially looking back down the river below.

We sure didn’t want to fall on this cactus.

These are some photos along the trail.

 

Our goal was to reach the Ancient Pueblo Granaries. I read that these granaries date back to Ad 1100. They are tightly constructed structureswhich protected food from rodents and preserved corn and seeds for long periods of time in the dry climate.  Duffy told us not to touch them because they could crumble and he pointed out one of them that somebody had touched and it was now a pile of rubble.

Katny had already climbed up to the granary and was happily sitting there.

Ken and I then climbed up to the ledge. We left our poles down below.  It was not easy.  This is Ken’s photo of Duffy standing below the ledge.  You can see the crumbled rubble of on the left dies of the photo not far from the windows.

Ken climbed up and I met him there.   The ledge where we sat was just big enough for to sit down – very narrow.

 

I looked at Ken and could tell that he was just about frozen. This is what he wrote on his Facebook page with this photo. “I’m smiling on the outside, but trembling on the inside!) My friend Curly (right) said she’d never seen ‘that look’ in my eye before. Getting up the last 10 feet to the hole in the wall put it there!”

I was the last one to climb back down to Duffy who was waiting to make sure that we didn’t fall over the ledge below. I was happy that I climbed up to meet them.

Ken was even happier when he got down off the ledge so safety.  I think Duffy was also happy for us to start on our way back down the trail.

For me was much easier for me to hike down than up because my lungs didn’t have to work as hard. It still took some negotiating because there were some pretty sketchy places were we had to negotiate over large drops. I almost had to sit down on a couple of the rock to make the next step.

I was pretty tired after doing that hike to the granary.  Ken and I decided that future hikes should be rated based on this one. Ken said we should call it the, “Duffy Dale Granary Rating Scale.”

It was a pretty chilly evening.  Nancy Chase is warming her hands over our cooking dinner.

It gets dark pretty early and it had started to rain a bit so we hunkered down into the tents.  I think we were in our tents by 8:30.