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There's an old saying that "getting there is half the
adventure." Whoever said that was so true!
Our adventure began on Wednesday, September 19, the day that we spent driving
to Lee's Ferry. That morning, John and I awoke and, just like any normal
workday, we got Mary up and dressed and took her to day care. As we handed her
off to one of her teachers, we said our good-byes to her, knowing that it
would be days before we would see her again. (I don't have to say how
difficult it was for me to do that.) At five o'clock that evening, Janice
would be picking her up from day care, and for the next six days, she would be
staying with the Guckenburgs until our return.
On our way back from Mary's day care, John and I stopped at Einstein's Bagels
to pick up something for breakfast; then, we stopped briefly at Circle K to
buy ice for the cooler, which would contain beer and sodas for the trip. While
we were there, we saw the motor home drive by us - John's parents were already
on their way to our house to pick us up…early!
We went home and found them waiting for us there. Naturally, we gave them
grief about being so early and then made them wait longer for us while we did
our last minute preparations. We made sure that the cats had enough food and
water, and we turned the air-conditioning up to eighty-six degrees. We also
left several things on the kitchen table for Janice: the keys to the Jeep
(which we had allowed her to borrow while we were gone), my set of car and
house keys, a check for Mary's day care (so that Janice could pay them on
Monday), and $60 to buy milk and food for Mary. Then, after locking up the
house, we climbed into the motor home and began our long drive to Lee's Ferry.
We left Phoenix around 8:00 a.m. and drove non-stop until we reached the rest
area just outside of Flagstaff. We stopped there briefly so that we could
stretch our legs and use the restrooms, then we were soon on the road again.
Our next stop was at a Safeway in Flagstaff to do some grocery shopping.
Naturally, we had forgotten to pull our veggie sticks and apples out of the
refrigerator at home, so we had to buy some more - otherwise, we wouldn't have
enough food for lunch in Paria Canyon! John had also failed to find his
sunglasses, so he decided to purchase another pair for the trip.
Our road trip continued on Highway 89, which took us through the Navajo
Nation. That part of the trip was uneventful, with the exception of the road
construction that delayed us by about twenty minutes. During that time, I
showed off the pictures from our San Francisco trip to Bill and Erika.
It was still early in the day when we arrived at the junction of Highway 89
and 89A, so we decided to go to Page for lunch and head to Lee's Ferry later.
We also wanted to stop at the Wal-Mart in Page, so that Bill could shop for a
new camp chair - the one that he had now did not give him the back support
that he needed. He thought that Page would be the place to find the one that
he wanted, but he was unable to find one there.
We were going to eat lunch at the Dam Bar, where the four of us had had drinks
once before, following our Lake Powell adventure in June of 1999. However, the
Dam Bar did not open until 3:00 p.m. Instead, we ate Mexican food at a little
restaurant nearby. There, we sat out on the patio and enjoyed a nice, cool
breezy afternoon. "If the weather is anything like this over the next four
days," I thought, "this will be a nice backpacking trip."
Once we had finished our business in Page, we returned to the highway junction
and took SR 89A to Lee's Ferry. We had passed through that area before, on our
way back from Zion National Park, when we had taken the scenic route through
Fredonia. ("Pay lots of attention here," John announced jokingly to me,
"because you might see something that you missed.") Indeed, 89A was the more
scenic of the two routes going into Utah. It passes through Marble Canyon and
the Vermilion Cliffs, which are absolutely spectacular to see. At the base of
the cliffs are various boulders that have fallen from the cliffs, some of
which have taken on very interesting shapes. We saw several that looked like
frogs and others that we balanced, one on top of another, so that they looked
like mushrooms.
We arrived at Lee's Ferry around 3:00 p.m. While Bill dumped the tanks on the
motor home, John and Erika and I got out to take a look around. John pointed
out various sights, such as Lee's Backbone; he also showed us where the Paria
River flows into the Colorado River. Of course, it wasn't difficult to pick
that out, because the Paria River was a dirty, chocolate brown color. "Well,
that's different," John said. "Last year, it was a green-gray color!"
As we would find out later, there would be nothing about this trip that would
be the same as last year. But I digress…
Before heading to the campground, we took a few moments to sightsee in Lee's
Ferry. We made a stop at the ranger station, which was closed (on a weekday?),
and we made another at Paria Beach, which is where we got a better look at the
confluence of the Paria and the Colorado Rivers. Here, according to the
signage, we could see "riffles" in the river, but they looked more like a
class one rapid to me. At the convergence point of the two rivers, there were
rocks in the Colorado River, which caused these riffles in the flow of the
river.
Upon entering the campground, we chose site number forty and parked the motor
home there; then, before settling down for the evening, we made a few last
minute adjustments to our backpacks, making sure that everything we needed was
packed. Once finished, I tried my pack on and was surprised to see how well it
rode on my back. I said, "This is great! I should have no problem carrying
this pack for forty miles!"
Around five o'clock that evening, John announced, "Around this time, Janice is
picking up Mary from day care." I think we were all wondering just how Mary
was going to react when Janice arrived at day care to take her to a home other
then her own. All I could think of was a Baby Blue's comic strip in which
Wanda's sister, Rhonda, babysat the baby, Zoe, for the evening. When the
parents came home, Rhonda left immediately, stating that she was going to get
her tubes tied.
For dinner that evening, we ate spaghetti and salad, for that extra
carbohydrate boost that we needed before embarking on our journey. After
dinner, we watched a little bit of television, but then we retired early, to
get enough sleep for our first day in Paria Canyon... Return
to Paria Canyon. |
