Saturday, July 19, 2008

19 July 2008

I'm home from paradise! Holy crap was it an awesome week. I had a blast. We drove in Monday night and then hiked down about 7 miles. The whole hike is about 11 or 12 miles, the Indian Village is about 8 and then its another 3 or so miles to the first fall. We slept on the trail a mile outside of town Monday night and then went and got our permits early Tuesday morning.

We went to all three of the major waterfalls the first day. If you ever plan on making the trip, Navajo Falls is definitely the most fun to play at, there is tons to explore and lots of great places to jump into crystal clear water. Moonie Falls: can I say amazing. I think the fall is about 300 ft. and to get to the base of the falls you have to climb down a cliff holding on to chains...so cool. If you hike down the creek beyond that, there are lots of little 15 ft falls you can jump from and underwater caves to swim into.

The second day when we woke up the water was brown as the chocolate milk river in Willie Wonka's factory. It rained the first day and I guess it washed down tons of mud and gunk from upstream. We continued to play and have a blast. We were in the water long enough to slowly watch as the water cleared back into a heavenly clear blue. That night we had to hold a tribal counsel because a couple of the guys had gotten some really bad blisters hiking in and wanted to take the helicopter out on Thursday morning. So us poor college students who couldn't afford that three minute trip started the hike out at 4:30 am Thursday morning (FYI--those switchbacks coming out are a nightmare!). It stunk because we lost a whole day at the falls, but one of the guys mom dropped the check for us to stay in the Bellagio in Las Vegas!

A free night in a suite on the Vegas strip! We were 34 floors up and could see the whole city from our window. This suite was amazing, I felt like a celebrity. After walking around town for a couple hours we went to the midnight showing of the Dark Night...

Need I say more: holy crap...that movie was crazy good.

Anyway, I'm home now safe and sound. It's a relief to be off the trail.

Below are some pictures of my trip:


2 comments:

The Gallands said...

Whoo HOOOOO ! That looks awesome! I love you playing the giant "Big" piano.

Ty Roney said...

Your blog is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Todd, you are bound for success in all that you do. Especially the marriage thing.