Travelogue

All packed up and ready to goOur white water rafting adventure with AzRA (Arizona Raft Adventures) began at the Little America Hotel in Flagstaff, where we would gather with our group of fellow adventurers for a mandatory orientation meeting before departing for Lee’s Ferry the next day.

As we took a seat in the meeting room, I was somewhat surprised to see that half of the participants were easily half our age. For some reason I had expected an older demographic, as had been our experience on other group tours.

However, the trip was billed as quite physically demanding, so I guess that scared away some of our more mature peers from signing on. The recommended 8-week training program leading up to the trip could be quite intimidating for many people even much younger than us. Fortunately, Herb and I have kept in pretty good shape, so we figured we could hold our own.

As I glanced around the room at the others in the group, I thought OK, they look nice enough, so hopefully we would get along just fine for the next 14 days. Little did I know at the time that we would become like family before it all was over.

Once the meeting was over, we went back to our room and started packing our river bags: white one (boat bag) for stuff we wanted with us during the day, and the blue one (camp bag) for stuff we wanted when we arrived at camp each night.

As usual, I had packed way too much, thinking that I would require a new outfit each night when we got to camp. The reality would be that I would live in the same clothes for days at a time.

Once we finished stuffing our bags, it was right to bed for an early morning bus ride to Lee’s Ferry where we would start our river adventure..