Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Jemima Pett suggested it, and since there are so many more photos in my Grand Canyon rafting album than I was able to share even in 8 posts on the trip, I'm doing one more, just for some of the pretties that didn't make the cut. Of course, I lost track of the days of the week again, so here's my Photo Friday coming on Saturday again. These are just some random photos from the first half of the trip that didn't make it into the main trip reports, with minimal commentary. Approaching Navajo Bridge, Day 1   First morning on the river Looking for whitewater Some kind of wormish fossil The sandstone and limestone portions of the Canyon are full of fossils. It's not just fossils. The Canyon is full of life.  Humans, too, sometimes being strange. The apex of river fashion Creekside boulder reveals the radical variations in water level in the Little Colorado Keep an eye on the sky. Morning haze. Water color The beautiful green or clear water we had all the way isn't nat...

Rafting the Grand Canyon, Day 13. This trip was April 3-18, 2021, with AZRA--Arizona Raft Adventures. See previous reports: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Remember how back on the 3rd day I wondered if 16 days was going to be too long? By the morning of the 13th day, with only 3 more real river days to go, I knew it wasn't going to be long enough. It would have been wonderful to have spent more days moseying through the upper parts of the canyon, because now with ocatillo on the shores and lower walls, we could feel the beginning of the end. Still: I thought this would be a final report and cover the last 4 days, but when I looked at the photos... nope. There was still a lot going on, including the exciting passage through Lava Falls Rapid. A big day, it deserves a post of its own. Day 13 There may have been some who felt a little nervous about our 13th day being the one we would run Lava Falls Rapid, possibly the single most famous (after Crystal?). But for most of us, ...

I keep thinking I can cover more than 2 days in a single post, but there are so many photos, and we did so much! So forgive my self-indulgence and be patient as I work my way down the river. For Zeke, I'm adding info about our camps and stops. Day 7: This was a day for an early start, due to the logistics of running a river whose flow is controlled by a region's power needs. Crystal Rapids is a notoriously challenging stretch, and is easier at low water. Thus we were hurried along to get to the rapids before the morning's release from the dam (to power the SW) reached that stretch of the river. We left camp at 8 a.m. and headed straight into Boucher Rapids, leaving us all cold and wet (especially those in the bow of the boat).  Ready to shove off after a night on a wind-blown sand dune.  Of course, I don't really have any photos of going through the rapids, since I was too busy hanging on. I was more likely to get photos when we paused below a rapid to keep an eye on th...