Jeeping to the Grand Canyon September 2009...or The Story of River Chicken and Vicious Bats

September started out with a jeep/camping trip over memorial day weekend down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Yes you can do that. I know that you are probably thinking... But wouldn't the jeeps scare the mules? Why doesn't everyone just do that rather than hike the 11 miles down to phantom ranch and the 11 miles (feels like 30) back up? Well it's not the same area is the short answer. The area that we camped is in the Hualapi Resesrvation, which is also known as Grand Canyon West. It's still the Grand Canyon, still super cool, but it's not part of the National Park. We also have to pay over 20 bucks per person per day to the tribe to be down there...and yes they check. It's actually just a camp ground where the Diamond Creek meets the Colorado River and where the river rafters camp. View wise it's not as neat as the hike in the park, but I also didn't have an 11 inch bruise across my rear end from the pack either. So that was a plus....but I digress.

Bryan, Grace, and the boys went down early to set up camp and our friend Charlie and I came down after work. Charlie and I got lost took a few crazy trails met some other crazy Brian. We passed who is a ham radio opperator and kept asking us every time we pulled in if we were looking for Bryan. I said yes, but you aren't him. Finally I ended up pulling out my ham and tried to call for my Bryan this got the other Brian all excited and he was going to send me his callsign card. Little did he know that I am not the radio enthusiast that he thinks I am. I just like taking tests. :)

After about 5 hours of searching for the turn off Charlie and I finally realized we needed to be in Peach Springs before we turned....Google maps failed us in this situation. So we finally made it down to where the Colorado and Diamond Creek meet and Bryan, Mark, Marc, Chris, and Quinn had set up camp. We just missed the drama of Bryan and Mark being attacked by a bat who then attached itself to Bryan's crotchal area on his pants.

They were still very excited about all of this when we finally showed up. And although I thought the bat was cute...It might have had rabbies.

So we cooled off in the creek and went to bed. It was hot and sandy but we were finally able to get some sleep. The next morning we woke up to some amazing canyon walls.

We spent the rest of the day in the water (I perfered the colorado giving me a back massage)

We also went hiking...

setting up a tent to sit in as we sat in the water...

watching Grace play in The Water (Yes, The Water)...

and playing River Chicken (Charlie Won)

And stopping crazy men in red shirts from bashing grace's head in with a rock. I'm still seeing red about that. She was on a leash and yes she was barking, but really?!? All in all it was a good trip and we hope to do it again soon...hopefully when it's less hot.