Wildadventures Rafting

It was quite cool this morning waking up, but by 10:30 the coolness had worn off.
Today we were spending several hours rafting down the Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powell, and into the Colorado River around Horseshoe Bend. 
We met up with the group around 9:30, got all the boys fitted for life jackets. We had to go through a TSA security system before loading onto the bus. I mean bags checked, metal detectors, thankfully we kept our shoes on.  The security officer even had to ride with us down to the Glenn Canyon Dam. 
The ride down was neat. Our driver was Ms. Leola. She is Navajo who likes to drive over 25 mph which she wasn't allowed to do in the tunnel leading to the dam. At least that is what she told us.  The tunnel took two years to construct ( I believe he said in the 50's) and they started at opposite ends and were only off by a foot. Pretty good considering they didn't have access to technology like today.  Once through the tunnel and off the bus, we had to put on our hard hats and walk down to our boat raft. Purpose of the hard hats? People like to throw things off the bridge.  
Looking up is 700 feet. Glenn Canyon is 16 feet shorter than Hoover Dam. The reason is if they had built it higher it would've flooded the Rainbow Bridge,  which is sacred to the Navajo. 

Lake Powell is currently only operating at about 32% water level.  Next year they are rationing water from sources in hopes it doesn't run dry.  

Longhorned Mountain sheep live in the canyons, as do wild horses. People use to live in the Canyons as well, there is even a car junk yard buried with in Canyon walls.  There are several places to camp along the lake and river. The landscape was beautiful.  We stopped at a " beach" for about 45 minutes. We swam, walked,  played in the Colorado River.  Freezing, clear water.  We saw trout swim by.  Apparently the government is paying people to catch Brown Trout. 
We floated around Horseshoe Bend. It was beautiful.  We landed at Lee's Ferry to catch the bus back to the lot.  The ride back was about an hour to which we went with through Navajo Reservation.  Ms. Leola gave us a history of some of the landscape.  Reservation land was not what I expected.  It's so dry and rocky, and stone everywhere.  Life again is so spaced out.  She said there are people who. still operate without water and electricity out on the Reservation. The whole Reservation life is so interesting to me,  makes me want to go back and study it more than I have. 
Once back to our campsite we took the boys back out to the Lake to let them swim some more. By 7:00 p.m. here one of not all 3 were in meltdown mode from being tired.   Dinner was whatever they wanted so they could get into bed. 

Up early tomorrow so we can go see the Rainbow Bridge. 







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