Four Days in the Lower Grand Canyon
It honestly feels magical.
We have seen the Grand Canyon from the rim before, but this was a totally different experience because we were down in it. And to know far away civilization and everything like that is… that’s a really cool feeling.
Six million people a year go to the South Rim and stare over the edge and are not really sure what to do with that when they look over the edge. But only a fraction of that get to come down the river and find the little hidden gems that you would never see from the top.
The Bar Ten Ranch
So the first day of our Grand Canyon trip, we spent the night at this tiny Bar Ten Ranch. It was out in the middle of nowhere. It was the wild, Wild West. We slept in covered wagons, we rode ATVs, which was amazing, to this beautiful overlook. We got to do clay pigeon shooting, we got to go horseback riding. It was just awesome. They have the most gentle, easy horses to ride and it was just beautiful the trail they took you on is awesome.
The helicopter ride into the Grand Canyon was truly one of my very favorite parts of this whole trip; just looking down feeling as though you're almost like a hawk flying over the Grand Canyon… like that beautiful bird's eye view that was absolutely amazing to me.
Once you're in the canyon you really you feel like you're floating through a postcard. It's really hard to describe. You get to like ride through the canyon and see how high and how tall and how
big the canyon is. Which made me feel really really small. But it was just beautiful… just like this can't be real!
The lower granite gorge has these beautiful sheer walls that are just magnificent. You get these incredible galleries of these fluted columns and polished stone.
The night sky was probably my favorite part. we could see the Milky Way. It was gorgeous. It was super cool because we got to stop along the way. First we did this awesome little fun hike to pumpkin springs and there's this place where you can actually jump off a cliff very safely, and so a number of us did. It was just very exhilarating and then we went to a waterfall. The travertine falls are absolutely amazing it wasn't so much the waterfall itself but it's still climbing up to this giant… almost like a cave… and there's a place to sit underneath the waterfall.
Some of those rapids down in that lower gorge are just a lot of fun it's almost like a Disneyland ride. When you're done you're completely soaked! There's big haystack waves that'll crash right over you and get you nice and wet. We're yelling and screaming and whooping and it's super fun.
The most special part of the lower canyon trip is that we're able to have younger kids on this trip it's a great opportunity for people who can't take time off from work but still want to have this epic Grand Canyon white water rafting adventure. I think it's probably our favorite trip that we've ever been on, being able to just be away from your phone for a couple of days… just unplug, no worries out here in the Grand Canyon, in the wilderness… We've just had an amazing time. You feel very well cared for, and the food is great, the scenery is spectacular. You really just can't be getting out here and sort of experiencing it for yourself.
Over 20 years of having done this job, I’ve seen people coming from a more and more divisive complicated and busy life and so what I hope that they gain from the canyon is just some peace and some solitude. It's really hard to convey the scope of the place until you're physically here and have done it down in the river. Until you've seen that, no matter what IMAX movie you've seen, you don't get the scale of it. I think it's something that once you've experienced, you you don't really ever forget it.
I think that's that's the single thing: it's just so humbling for people to get down here and really see kind of the scale and the beauty and the rawness of a place.
