Day 8



Morning in the canyon



Some characters



Today was a straight rafting day, we ran somewhere around 20 rapids of various levels.  The first rapid of the day was Crystal.  Crystal is supposed to be one of the hardest rapids on the entire river.  As we scouted it I was very excited there was a huge hole in the middle, and another at the bottom.  We ended up deciding to miss both holes though, so we snuck by the rapid close to shore.  This made Crystal, the rapid that I had been looking forward to for a while, into probably the biggest disappointment of the trip.  Oh well, while the run was very anticlimactic, the scouting was for sure not. 

May not look huge, but it is

Close up

Miles and I walked down to take a close look at the rapids and snap some pictures, then started walking back to the main group.  Upon the hike back we saw a really nice big garter snake; it was the first snake of the trip so we had to get some pictures.  After it slithered off we started walking off to return to the group.  We were walking not ten feet away looking at our camera, reviewing the pictures we just took, when all of the sudden there was a noise in front of us that chilled us to the bone.  Miles leapt backwards, thankfully with me in his hands.  We think that he may have set the record for long jumping on that single leap.  There in front of us, not five feet from where we had just stood, was a large beautiful rattle snake that had just given us that very stern warning.  I have to say that I don’t know of much to chill your blood like the sound of a rattle snake in the wild.  The adrenaline rush from that event didn’t fade until sometime well into the evening amidst the corn hole games and vodka drinks.          

I feel like Steve Irwin, kind of

It calms nervs

-SM-

Please favorite or subscribe to the blog, and friend spike on Facebook, if you have not already.  His page is http://www.facebook.com/#!/spike.miller.106