16 days, 16 people, 5 boats, one GRAND CANYON
Do you ever write lists and add things that you've already done to the list, just so you can check it off? Like most people, I have a bucket list. Paddling down the grand canyon with my boyfriend and his family, occasionally wearing a Bat Girl costume was not actually on it. I'm gonna give myself a checkmark anyway. Here's an abridged story(I'm working on the novel but it may take a few years)...
I'd been on about two dates with my boyfriend and co conspirator George when he asked me if I would paddle the Grand Canyon with him. I was amazed that he would ask me so soon into our courtship. With my free spirited track record, he would be lucky if we were still together over a year down the road! I laughed and said sure, not truly understanding what I agreed to do.
chocolate milk colorado river August 2015
I don't like camping in a tent. Fish freak me out. I'm addicted to chapstick. And I admit, although I love to go down the rapids, rafting as a whole had always been pretty boring for me. Slowly the minor (cough. cough) details leaked out of George. "Everything you pack in, you pack out," he casually mentioned at Christmas last year. That doesn't sound too bad until you start thinking about the food. And then the food that has been digested... Yes.
Of course scorpions, snakes, and ringtailed cats were potential dangers along the way. Then there's the fact that cell phones don't work at all in the canyon and we would be totally cut off from civilization for 16 days. Our best chance of contacting help was from a sattelite phone, and the chances that we would contact extraterrestrial beings was greater than reaching a plane flying overhead. So all of these small details began to line up before me and I decided not to go. I sat on the decision for about two months and then the reality of what I would be missing out on hit me. I woke up one day and knew what I had to do.