Grand Canyon rafting Trip

9/1/05
Today my dad and I started our Grand Canyon journey with a scenic drive from Fort Collins to Durango. Having just made the drive using the "usual" route a few months ago, I thought it'd be fun to drive some roads I hadn't seen before and also see some new scenery.

The trip from Fort Collins to Glenwood Springs was mostly non-noteworthy with the exception of the detour I took up Lookout Mountain in Golden. That's a really fun road to drive and has some spectacular views. We made pretty good time on I-70 to Vail because I was following an Audi at 90-100 miles an hour.

From Glenwood Springs, we headed south on 133 to Carbondale and then west over McClure Pass. Lots of great views of Mount Sopris and the surrounding peaks. A short ways after the pass we stopped in Paonia for some lunch at a diner. With full bellies, we continued west towards Olathe and stopped in a winery for some tasting. Afterward, we went south on 550 all the way to Durango.

550 is an extremely fun and scenic road that goes through Montrose, Ouray, Silverton, and Durango. The twisties were great fun to drive through and I'm glad there wasn't too much holiday traffic yet. There's nothing like double clutching from 4th to 2nd on a hairpin in the mountains an accelerating to 90 on the straights.

We arrived in Durango around 4 and checked into the lovely Ramada. Oddly enough, I ran into an old Agilent coworker in the parking lot who had ridden here for a motorcycle rally. Now I'm off to find some grub.



9/2/05
Day two started with another 5AM wakeup. Virtually nothing was open in Durango at that hour so breakfast had to wait until Cortez. The dark drive to Cortez was a little hypnotizing, but I'm glad my reflexes were awake because a deer decided to walk out in front of me. A quick slam on the brakes followed by a swerve and we were good to go.

From Cortez we headed through the four corners and down to Canyon de Chelly. The scenery was great and we drove through and stopped at all the "scenic overlooks". I'm a little scenic overlook'd out now.

Until we got to I-40, all the roads we traveled were 2 lane highways with with little traffic and loooong straights. Consequently, we made pretty good time. (It didn't hurt that I was doing over 100 occasionally.)

We checked into our hotel in Flagstaff and then headed out on the town to pick up my fishing license and check out the observatory. I'm not too into astronomy, but it was pretty cool to tour the observatory where Pluto was discovered. I'll spare you the details, but it's an interesting story.

At 7 we had our pre-trip meeting, and it looks like I'm the youngest person on the boat. I'm probably half the age of most of the people actually. I'm a little surprised because I was expecting a little younger of a crowd since this is a hiking focused trip. Some of the people have actually hike the canyon before, so I have high hopes that they're prepared to hike.

Off to bed now. I have lots of pictures already, and I'll post them up after I get out of th canyon (on 9/12). Take care of the real world for me while I'm gone.