Grand Canyon: Ok, Seriously The Last Prologue

After a wonderful day at camp, Aimee and I woke up to a couple more tentmates than we're used to.

We'll keep them.

After getting dressed, Aimee and Jill explored the overlook that I ran up to watch Dean the day before.

But I was fine staying at the beach this time, thankyouverymuch.

Even if it did mean a bit of low back pain.

After a lazy breakfast, we loaded everyone on the boat (infinitely easier without all of our gear), and made our way upriver to the dam.

Dean was at the helm, with Mimi and Otto on lookout.

We made a quick stop at some petroglyphs, but didn't have much time to reflect on the canyon's history, since it's present was quite warm.

We hopped back in the boat, and cruised another twenty minutes or so to the dam.

Mimi was already living her best life, and it only got better when the picnic came out.

Quinn, again, thinking that it's totally normal to be crawling around the mouth of the Grand Canyon a month before his first birthday.

As you can see, the river is pretty wide at the base of the dam, so the water is relatively calm. So we spent the afternoon floating around on a paddle board and kayak Dean had borrowed from some work friends.

This is what I have to look forward to.

We cruised back to camp after lunch and had a reasonably easy time putting our kids down for a nap. The newness and excitement was somewhat balanced out by running around at mach 7 in full sun for the morning.

While Dean took his kids on a floating nap in the boat, Jill took advantage of the kidless afternoon to kayak down the river a bit.

When Dean came back, he told us about a nice shady beach he had found down river a couple of miles. He proposed motoring over for a picnic dinner. And I'll be honest, it was not an easy undertaking to talk myself into getting up from the camp chair, but it was totally worth it.

As you can see, Dean convinced me to go by packing the camp chair in our boat. It was a good lure.

And if this place wasn't already toddler paradise, there was a puppy!

A couple from Flagstaff that Dean met at Lee's Ferry while he was waiting for Aimee and Jill happened to be stopping at that beach to pick up some firewood.

So their puppy chased our puppies for a bit, and it was hard not to think about how lucky we are to be here.

Back at camp, Mimi and Ruby made themselves right at home.

Even before this trip, these two were inseperable. If they weren't so exhausted, it would have been impossible to put them in different tents for the night. But we were able to peel them apart, put the kids to bed, and still have a few minutes around the campfire before we started falling asleep, ourselves.

And at first light, Mimi and Ruby were back in lockstep together.

We spent the morning playing at a little off-river grotto we had seen the day before. It would have been worth the trip for the beauty alone, but it also served to get the kids good and tired for our boat ride and drive home that afternoon.

Quinn: Uh, dad, a little help here?
Me: Sure, just hang on one second so I can get my camera.

Back at camp, we slowly, begrudgingly packed up our gear after a wonderful couple of days.

Unsurprisingly, 7/8ths of us fell asleep on the way home, but thankfully Dean kept his eyes open.

As we pulled into Lee's Ferry and Mimi waved bye to the river, she asked if we could come back tomorrow.

If only Mimi. If only.

Of course, the grownups would be coming back in a couple of months for Jill's 40th birthday, but why ruin the moment?

Grand Canyon: Epilogue to the Prologue

Dean I took turns piloting the nine miles upriver to Horseshoe bend. Nine miles normally wouldn't be much of a journey, but we were fighting the full power of the Glen Canyon dam, the behemoth Grand Canyon gate keeper that provides electricity to Phoenix, Las Vegas, and most of the American Southwest.

As you can imagine, that kind of electricity requires quite a bit of hydropower, and the dam's water release is measured in tens of thousands of cubic feet of water per second. Per second. It's staggering to think about, particularly as you pilot a boat directly against it.

I'm making a good show, but in my mind I was still questioning the wisdom of putting three small kids in this bathtub skating along enough power to light the Las Vegas Strip, Chase Stadium, and the homes of five million people. Mostly I was just happy that Dean had borrowed pro-level life jackets for all of us. It doesn't look like much in a photo, but it's easy to underestimate the force of the Colorado. People die in it every year.

The campsite we were hoping to stay at was right at the bottom of Horseshoe Bend, the site captured in a thousand classic Southwest photos where the Colorado River nearly doubles back on itself.

Carsten Tolkmit [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

When we arrived around 9:00, the beach was empty, and the early wake up was immediately worth it. We had the site to ourselves, and unloaded the gear at an absolutely perfect spot to spend the weekend.

Aimee and Jill would be arriving at Lee's Ferry in about 30-45 minutes, so Dean got back on the boat to pick them up while I started to set up camp with Otto. We climbed up on an overlook to wave Dean off, but I did not like what I saw. Well outside of shouting distance, we saw Dean standing up on the boat, pulling on the motor start cord. He had lost power, and was drifting in the Colorado. Otto and I scrambled up higher on the overlook to get a better view, and when we caught our next glimpse of Dean, he was drifting backwards, oars out, towards the canyon wall. Not good.

Unsure if I'd ever see my friend, or modern civilization again, I took Otto back to the campsite so at least one of the Knuth men would be safely returned to Jill at some point. And to make matters worse, on top of our gear pile, we saw Dean's lifejacket just sitting there, taunting us. Not good. Not good at all.

I tried to mask my distress, but I'm sure Otto knew on some level that I was worried. I scanned the river line for other boaters that I could recruit to rescue Dean, and turned my cell phone on to see if we were close enough to Page to pick up a signal from one of their cell towers. It turns out that the far corner of our campsite was, and I was able to get off a text to Jill to at least plant the seed that something was wrong, without terrifying her.

Meanwhile, Aimee and Jill made absolutely the right decision to keep the kids busy at a little beach along the Colorado near Lee's Ferry.

Those kids. I know.

Miraculously, after I had given up much hope of this vacation continuing as planned, Dean managed to motor back to camp about 20 minutes later.  By that point, I figured--at a minimum--Otto and I would be spending the day at camp alone, since Dean would need to swap out the boat back at Marble Canyon. I was mostly sure Dean himself would be fine, since there were no rapids on this stretch of the Colorado, and the current would eventually bring Dean back to Lee's Ferry. The lifejacket issue made me a little nervous, but I tried to put that thought out of my head.

But when Dean made it back to camp in one piece, I knew we could figure this out. It turned out that the gear selector lever on the motor handle had gotten loose, so Dean couldn't put the motor into drive. The motor itself was running fine, and he was able to get small burst of power out of it every now and then to make it back to camp.

So we tinkered with the cables for a bit and were able to re-engage the transmission. With the boat now running at full speed (and Dean's lifejacket back where it belonged), we were able to pick up the rest of our group. Otto, now not wanting to let his dad out of his sight, elected to make the boat ride back to Lee's Ferry with Dean. And I wasn't too broken up about his decision, exhausted after keeping someone else's kid alive for a whopping thirty minutes.

I may or may not have fallen asleep after setting up our camp chairs (at least I got a bit of our site ready), and awaited the rest of the gang.

Two hours later, I heard the put-put of our boat's outboard engine, and quickly popped out of the chair and pretended I wasn't asleep the entire time they were gone.

I looked down river, and saw the right amount of people on the boat. They had made it!

And it turns out that my fears of four kids bouncing around/out of the boat were misplaced. Every single one of them fell asleep within minutes of leaving Lee's Ferry.

Look closely.

And even before they fell asleep, the boat ride was apparently pretty pleasant. The novelty of the situation kept the kids pretty entertained.

Mimi in her natural state: Outdoors with a book, a smile, and a mouthful of food.

We spent the next hour or so setting up camp while the kids played on the beach.

Quinn, completely unaware that not every baby's first camping trip gets to be at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Mimi and Ruby, practicing their technique to become the youngest, and clearly most adorable, Grand Canyon River guides.

Oh good, Dean remembered to pack the Smirnoff Ice. 

This was a long running gag that often resulted in me muttering some curse as I stumbled across a cleverly hidden bottle of Smirnoff Ice, and then barely stomaching the taste of cheap liquor masked with a hell of a lot of sugar.

And just like that, every worry about weather, overboard toddlers, and not bringing enough beer was out the window. We had arrived.