A Guide Named Gunner and Other Inevitable Occurrences on the Colorado River

Other than the zip line, white water rafting was probably our favorite activity in Moab. We really love Moab. Every time we go there we find more things to do, but it's kept it's small town feel. 

Of course we have to be bused to the location where the raft gets in the river, which was about a twenty minute drive in a converted school bus. 

I have to stop here to talk about our bus driver, Doug. He reminded me of the comedian Ron White. If he would have had a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other, he would have been his twin. He had a really dry sense of humor. He was probably in his late 50's or early 60's and earlier in his career he was a river guide, rock climber, avid outdoor adventurer, but of course as we all know, it's hard to physically keep up the same level of activity. And so, Doug became the bus driver for the river tours. If you don't know who Ron White is I've inserted a link to give you an idea. WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE. Ron While: They call me Tater Salad

Sorry about the blurry pics. Tater Salad was driving around some pretty good curves at a decent rate of speed.

Here is one of our guides. This is Gunner, and as I mentioned in my Facebook post, having the name Gunner ensures only a couple of career choices- river raft tour guide happens to be one of them. In the mirror you can see Tater Salad (bus driver Doug). 

Peyton trying to look suave. Eli looking like he does in every photo. They are probably giving us the safety speech. We learned the sign for "I'm okay" and the sign for "I'm not okay." We learned how to catch the throw bag or T-Bag if we fell over and had to be pulled back in from a distance. 

 This is I am okay. The NOT okay sign is just your fist up.

This was our bus and rafts. There was another family who went on the other raft. 

This is just after we had "put in" as they call it. That's when you.... put your raft in the water. Guess what it's called when you take your raft out of the water...yep. That's the "put out" location. Actually, I don't think it's really called that, but our guide, Conner was new, and that's what he called it. I don't think he will ever live that down. Even the people on the other raft heard him and really gave him a hard time. Poor Conner.

Here we are looking like we are just floating leisurely down the Colorado River. Well we are actually floating leisurely down the Colorado River. This part was very calm, and we might have even been in an eddy which is a current that runs counter to the main flow of the river. It slows you way down and can even send you upstream. 

Fun fact: We don't have helmets on because these were only Class 1, 2, and 3 rapids. Anything higher than a Class 3 and you have to wear a helmet.

Our Guide Conner is from Salt Lake City, UT where he is a ski instructor during the winter months. He has a tough life. 

What's the difference between a river guide and a mutual fund? The mutual fund will eventually mature and earn money. 

What's the difference between a river guide and a large pepperoni pizza? The pepperoni pizza can feed a family of four. 

(jokes told by Gunner the guide)

We were getting up close to the cliffs so that we could see the cliff swallows' nests. They make them on the sides of the cliffs. The nests look a lot like a wasp nest stuck to a wall. Very papery looking. 

P.S. No idea if they were African or European swallows. 

Some beautiful scenery along the way. 

Several John Wayne movies were filmed near this location. In fact, in all of John Wayne's movies that showed the Rio Grande, they filmed them on the Colorado, so technically, we were in Mexico in this picture. 

I know it looked like we did nothing but float leisurely down the river, but there were rapids, I swear. It's just that you can't take pictures very well in the rapids while you are holding the chicken wire. (the rope around the raft) This was just before the end of the tour. Our guide told us there was a photographer on the shore taking pictures of us. Peyton had to be cool and let go so that he could vogue and strike a pose. I was yelling at him the whole time to hold on. He didn't listen to me. I think he would probably say it was worth it.

They took six or seven pictures, but this was the only on where all four of us were looking this way. The wave hit in the next photo and you can't see Eli. Then the raft turned sideways and Doug was blocked. Peyton looks the same in all of them, so I guess it kind of worked out for him.

Off Road, Zip Lines and Swinging Bridges

And now the posts are going to be out of order. We have been in places with really spotty internet, so I am a bit behind, so I'm going to jump around while things are fresh on my mind and try to get caught up.

First, the zip line. We booked the zip line adventure months ago and it was scheduled for our second full day in Moab, Utah with white water rafting on our first day.

The day began at 7:30 A.M. at Raven's Rim Zip Lines. We all got our speech on how to get into our gear and helmets and jumped in to the Polaris and Kawasaki UTV (ultimate terrain vehicle) This is where the off roading comes in. We have about a 20 minute ride up a crazy steep and rocky hillside to get to the first location.

Unfortunately about a quarter of the way up our vehicle broke down. It didn't exactly break down; they had put a front shock on the rear and it compressed making us drag on every rock on the trail. We had to pull over in one of the only spots on the trail to wait for a replacement vehicle...which they didn't have. Long story short, they had to cancel our tour, as well as the other group that was also signed up to go. We were each in a different vehicle with a guide, but it takes two guides for zip lining, one to send you and one to stop you at the other end, so without another way to get us all there, we had to cancel for the day.

This is what happens when you put a front shock on the rear. It compresses people! It doesn't compress people; I added that for emphasis.

I took pictures of our broken vehicle while we waited for someone to come get us. Our guide walked down to the office and the second guide shuttled down the other group while we waited.

This was our view. The broken vehicle is in the bottom of the page. The building you see in the center toward the top is the old home of Charlie Steen who is responsible for Moab being a town. He discovered uranium there in the 50's. He built a huge house overlooking Moab to show his wealth. At the time it cost 250K. There is an interesting "Mysteries at the Museum" episode about him. His house is now a restaurant called Sunset Grill, just like the Don Henley song.

One of the funniest parts about this was the group that was with us. They were from someplace not in the South, based on their dialect and attitude. One of the women kept saying, "This is going to be very bad on TripAdvisor. Very bad. It's going to hurt the owner's bottom line." She was going on and on about how they shouldn't be penalized for the problem and yada, yada, yada.  So now any time anything less than perfect happens (and even when it doesn't) Peyton and Eli break out in a very Long Island accent making hilarious speeches about how they are going to write a strongly worded review on TripAdvisor. It's pretty entertaining.

We just kind of took it in stride; I mean, what good is being upset going to do? It wouldn't fix the vehicle. It wasn't going to airlift us to the top. So we had decided to just rearrange out schedule and zip another day. The same "trip adviser lady" (pretty sure that's not her name but it's what we call her now,  told us that people from Tennessee were made of "very hearty stock" because we were really taking it well. Uhm...okay.

Now for the good stuff. We rescheduled for a sunset tour the next day and had a blast!

 Here are the boys all geared up. Ironically, on the second tour another vehicle broke down and we had to be shuttled up one group at a time. You'd think we might reconsider the trip after two incidents, BUT NO!

 

Here's Peyton and our guide, Nolan. On the longest zip which is 1/4 mile long, Peyton, who is somewhat afraid of heights, zipped all the way to the end but the brakes didn't catch him and he zipped backwards in between the posts,  where he was STUCK. The guide had to reattach himself and "retrieve" him. Peyton was a good sport about it and hey, he got 6 1/2 zips where everyone else got 6! (He did not threaten to write to a bad TripAdvisor review.)

 

As a cool bonus, there is a swinging bridge that we had to cross. It doesn't look that high up, but you can't see the huge chasm between the two rocks. there were trees growing that were so far down you couldn't see them in this picture. 

 

Here's Doug zipping. He would sometimes go first and then video us coming in on the GoPro.

 

Here's Eli zipping. 

This is a cool shot of Peyton. Since this is rock to rock zipping, you run off the rock to start your zip. This picture shows the rainbow behind him. It didn't rain more than a few drops, but it was an awesome rainbow.

Another shot of the rainbow and zip line on what looks to be the surface of Mars.

 These are the LaSal mountains. Just gorgeous. They do still have snow on them in places.The rule of thumb in Moab is if you can see the LaSals, you have a better chance at cell service.

 

Seriously, it looks like Mars.

 Thanks Doug for photobombing the ONE picture of me. As the family photographer I am in woefully few of the amazing photos. ;-)

 

I think I'll make this my profile pic.

And THIS was our view on the way down. It was beautiful, and I am going to make sure TripAdvisor knows it!

Petroglyfs Around the Canyon

We had some time at the Canyon and decided to go on a tour of some local Havasupi Indian Petroglyphs. Peyton though that would be pretty interesting, and I did too, so we contacted a local tour company and were able to get booked for an evening tour. 

The tour vehicle reminded me of one of the Jurassic Park trucks from the first movie. It wasn't a Jeep, but it had seats in the back of a truck bed. It was quite the ride. 

 This is us on the back row. Eli looks so ethereal.

Here's Peyton and Eli listening to the tour guide. Peyton looks like he is asleep, but I swear I caught him in a blink.

The paintings are under an overhang; it's almost a cave but not quite. This is the view from under the overhang. The Havasupi would come down into the valleys around the Canyon to hunt and they would need a place to stay. They would bring about half of their entire village on the hunting trip and use the same "cave" every time they hunted.

This is one of the coolest petroglyphs we saw. The broom looking object in the middle is actually a--wait for it.....volcano! There is a definite dormant volcano fairly near the site. The squares next to it make up a calendar that they used to record when each time the volcano erupted. It last erupted about 900 years ago which would have coincided with the Havasupi camp. The volcano would have definitely impacted their weather. 

This is a picture of a mule deer. It's definitely not an elk because the elk were not introduced into the area until about 100 years ago.

 

Here we are under the same petroglyph. I asked the guide about vandalism and if us being there was a danger the to the artwork. He said that there were so many of these around they were difficult to keep track of, but the best locations were kept a secret and not open to the public. 

This one is a little hard to tell, but it is a wall full of handprints. The elders would dip the hands of the children in the blood of whatever animal they killed and put their handprint on the wall the first trip hunting. Each family would have a location on the wall and everyone would know their own handprint. It would be like a big family album.

 

This is a picture of two of the most common plants. The Ponderosa Pine and the sage plant. The other very common plant is the Pinion Pine. It is much shorter than the Ponderosa and the needles are only about an inch long. It has a really strong smell.

 

These next pictures are of mule deer. We didn't see them on this excursion, but while we were driving around the park. They are SOOOOOO big compared to the white tailed deer we have back home, and they are not afraid of humans, because it's not like there are any hunters on National Park property.  We saw a lot more when we stayed in the Grand Canyon because we would be there at both dawn and dusk when they are most active. On our ride around the park at dusk on one night, we must have seen at least 20.