Map for day 10
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Day 9
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Day 11
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Today we made up for yesterday's late start with an early start. We had a long way to go to Havasu Canyon and Robby wanted to be on the river by 7 a.m. We had quick and easy breakfast of oatmeal and fruit and by 7 a.m. we were packed up and on the river. We were rafting with Fabry again today.
We did not encounter any major rapids today but did tide many smaller ones. Fishtail, Kanab and Upset gave us pretty good rides though and kept us cool. The morning ride on the river was very relaxing and we all had a lot of time to talk and discuss our feelings about the river, the Canyon and life in general. We stopped just above Havasu Canyon for an early lunch and to pack up some snacks to take with us to Havasu.
The spot where Havasu Creek comes into the Colorado River is a zoo. The creek comes down to the river between walls that are maybe 40-50 feet high and there is no beach. All of the rafts, from all of the various river trips, that are visiting the canyon, simply tie up next to each other along the cliffs and to get to shore you have to crawl over one raft after another until you make your way out to the end.
We were scheduled to spent about 4 hours at Havasu and after seeing all of the boats that were there I was not very enthusiastic about this. We walked a short ways up the canyon to a very nice spot where there were a number of pools and small waterfalls. To my surprise there were very few people around and the place was not nearly as crowded as I had expected it to be. Havasu Canyon was a small paradise and the scenery along the creek was spectacular. Kurt would be leading a hike from here up to Beaver Falls some 4 miles away and anyone who didn't want to go with him could do whatever they wanted for the remainder of the afternoon. The plan was to have everyone meet back at these pools at a pre-appointed time. Kurt said that the hike would take almost all of the time that we had at Havasu and so many of us opted not to go and we stayed back and lounged around in the pools and the shade. Robin and I did walk up the canyon about 1 1/2 miles and swam in some other pools before returning to the meeting area. It was a very relaxing day.
We left Havasu around 4 p.m. and headed downstream to National Canyon to camp for the night. Robin had developed an eye infection and was having serious problems trying to get one of her contact lenses out. Dave and Chris were very helpful and finally managed to get it out after rinsing here eye with a saline solution. They found some antibiotic in their first aid kit that was prescribed for eye infections and so they applied some of that as well. They were very concerned about the condition though and were talking about having her air lifted out on the following day if the eye did not look better.
For dinner we had linguini, garlic bread, shrimp with cocktail sauce and salad for dinner. We had carrot cake for dessert. Robin was in no mood for dinner and simply tried to relax in the tent.
After dinner we had a party with group from Can Ex (Canyon Expeditions) who were camped just downstream on the other side of the delta at National Canyon. They had a guitar player along with them and Dave surprised us all when he broke out a harmonica. They put on a great show for us though the guitar player did do a really bad job and massacred his renditions of Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl and Vaughn Monroe's Ghost Riders. All in all it was a fun time though and I even managed to coax Robin out of the tent for a while. She claimed that she was feeling better and that the eye did not hurt.
Day 9
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Day 11
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