Tres Westbrook
Member
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2013
- Messages
- 122
Neither my wife nor I had ever been to the southern Utah / Arizona Strip area until 2013, when we visited Zion NP, GSENM, Capitol Reef NP, and Bryce NP, and fell in love with it. We spent 8 days exploring the area, but of course that was not even enough time to scrape the surface. It just whetted our appetite for more. So we came back for Memorial Day week in 2014, with plans to canoe down the Colorado and camp in Horseshoe Bend, backpack the Narrows from top to bottom, and hike out to Shaman's Gallery in the Grand Canyon. And to keep the wife happy, a final night of rest and recovery in Las Vegas before flying home. The first leg of our adventure involved renting a canoe, putting in at Lee's Ferry and getting a backhaul up to near the dam.
We picked up our canoe at Lee's Ferry Lodge on May 25, and drove up to Lee's Ferry, with a short side trip across Navajo Bridge into the Navajo Nation. Shortly after noon, a Colorado River Discovery tour boat met us and ferried us up the river. Along the way, the guide pointed out several points of interest that we might want to explore on the way back. After about an hour and a half we reached the drop off point and started our float back down the river.
The rest of the day and most of the next we slowly meandered down the river, stopping several times to sit on the bank and watch the river roll by beneath the towering cliffs of Glen Canyon. Except for the clarity of the water, this likely was how the area looked all along the river before the dam was built. I could have spent a week just lazily floating down the river a couple miles per day. Instead, we camped right below and across the river from the Horseshoe Bend overlook. We could see periodic camera flashes from far above long after the sun went down. When I woke before dawn cameras were still flashing up at the overlook.
On Memorial Day we completed our trip, getting back to Lee's Ferry in mid-afternoon. We then headed to the Grand Canyon North Rim and got a cabin at the lodge. I hope to get back on that part of the river again some day. Unfortunately, there is just so much to do in the southern Utah / Arizona Strip area that it will be a long time before we exhaust all of the other extraordinary adventure opportunities. I do hope to bring my granddaughter back to float the river when she is old enough so that she can learn to love this area the same way that we have come to love it.
Anyway, here is a video of the trip:
Featured image for home page:
We picked up our canoe at Lee's Ferry Lodge on May 25, and drove up to Lee's Ferry, with a short side trip across Navajo Bridge into the Navajo Nation. Shortly after noon, a Colorado River Discovery tour boat met us and ferried us up the river. Along the way, the guide pointed out several points of interest that we might want to explore on the way back. After about an hour and a half we reached the drop off point and started our float back down the river.
The rest of the day and most of the next we slowly meandered down the river, stopping several times to sit on the bank and watch the river roll by beneath the towering cliffs of Glen Canyon. Except for the clarity of the water, this likely was how the area looked all along the river before the dam was built. I could have spent a week just lazily floating down the river a couple miles per day. Instead, we camped right below and across the river from the Horseshoe Bend overlook. We could see periodic camera flashes from far above long after the sun went down. When I woke before dawn cameras were still flashing up at the overlook.
On Memorial Day we completed our trip, getting back to Lee's Ferry in mid-afternoon. We then headed to the Grand Canyon North Rim and got a cabin at the lodge. I hope to get back on that part of the river again some day. Unfortunately, there is just so much to do in the southern Utah / Arizona Strip area that it will be a long time before we exhaust all of the other extraordinary adventure opportunities. I do hope to bring my granddaughter back to float the river when she is old enough so that she can learn to love this area the same way that we have come to love it.
Anyway, here is a video of the trip:
Featured image for home page:
