No Direction Home: Grand Canyon

May 8, 2012

Kathy

Grand Canyon

“ We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”

-Huckleberry Finn

Traveling over 280 miles down the Colorado River via raft over eight days encompasses so much more than just floating along with the occasional rapids to break up the trip. The trip through the Grand Canyon is an experience that offers insights into history, geology, archeology as well as the splendor of the natural world.

Aunt Kathy

Dakota

The Grand Canyon offers a geological profile that is unmatched anywhere else in the world and the beautiful distinctive layers of rock formation vary in color and characteristics as they rise up the canyon walls. Various shades of brown, red, orange, gray and green are common in the upper reaches and the colors often become darker as you enter the Inner Gorge. The Canyon has formed over millions of years with the oldest rock layers dating back over a billion years.

The Canyon also has a rich history, with many areas sacred to Native Americans who lived in and around the area for thousands of years. Europeans first discovered the Canyon in 1540 when Spanish soldiers led by Garcia Lopez de Cardenas arrived there. For the next four hundred years intrepid explorers followed with the first organized voyage to explore the Canyon coming in 1869 by John Wesley Powell. Seventy years later less than one hundred people had successfully navigated the river completely, so it is a relatively new experience for the lucky few who make the trip.

Throughout the trip, the raft would stop at times, to camp, eat or just to offer the opportunity to hike through the canyon to areas of special natural, historical or just beautiful significance. There were beautiful waterfalls, sites where previous explorers or native peoples left archeological evidence and areas of just sheer natural beauty.

Aunt Kathy

Kathy & Kathy

Dakota & Kathy

The Grand Canyon, while appearing dry and barren is actually full of life and incredible native plants and wildlife. Desert Bighorn sheep, mule deer, coyotes, beaver, eagles, falcons and a huge variety of birds and all manner of reptiles and amphibians (including rattlesnakes like the one that they encountered in one of their camps) are all found in the canyon. Beautiful plant life is also abundant, including a wide variety of cacti and beautiful flowering plants, many of which were in full spring bloom.

Rattlesnake

Early canyon explorer John Wesley Powell once said, “The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.”

To say that Kathy, Kathy & Dakota had an amazing trip can’t really do justice to their experience, and like Powell says, is almost impossible to capture it with either words or photos, but hopefully this blog posting gives a small insight into the trip. I know that they enjoyed just about every aspect of it from the drenching waters while running the rapids, to the beautiful hikes through the Canyon and the wonderful meals and sleeping out among the stars in one of the most special places on earth.