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Today was a sunny, warm day.  We made a short detour to visit Bryce Canyon National Park.  Mildly interesting from the rim.  Did you know it isn’t really a canyon?  It’s an escarpment.  Then we drove on, crossing the Colorado River by Lee’s Ferry.  We will be back here tomorrow!  Lots of cool places to check out in Southern Utah and Arizona, but we didn’t have time.  Gotta get to Flagstaff.  Got to the hotel by 4:00 and carried all of our gear to the room.  In all the shuffle carrying gear I misplaced my wallet!  It’s gotta be around here somewhere.  I can’t get on the river without an ID!  I’ll have to look for it later.

Followed Brother Craig to the airport to drop off his rental car.  Everyone met in the lobby at 6:00 PM to go to dinner.   Everyone was there right on time.  That’s a good sign.  Hopefully everything will go as well on the river.  This is the first time we have all met.  It looks like the leadership and hard work put into the planning and communications with the group to get us to this point have paid off.  Now I should be able to relax a bit, enjoy the trip, and focus more on being Daddy for Ariel.  Wow, is she ever excited!

Dinner at The Cracker Barrel.  Afterwards we stopped to get some postcards to be mailed from Phantom Ranch that will be carried out by mule.  Made some last-minute reorganizing of the gear. Bought extra skin lotion. (You can never have too much in the desert.)  Found my wallet under the bed in the hotel room!  Yea!  Now I can sleep easier.  Just need to send a few final emails and go online to renew the library books we have so they aren’t overdue when we get off the river.  Shutting down the laptop and unplugging for 22 days!  I will leave the laptop in the care of the front desk until we return in 3 weeks.  The outfitter will be showing up tomorrow morning at 11:00 AM to pick up us and our gear and shuttle us to the river.  I feel the bonds of civilization loosening already.

Visiting Bryce Canyon

Road to Bryce Canyon

Arizona border

House of rock built around a boulder

More boulders waiting for houses to be built around them

Meeting the group for the first time at dinner

From the other end of the table

Next Post: Day 0 – Arrive at the River
Previous Post: Drive to Central Utah