Got up early and we polished off the last 9 miles of the trip to the road end at diamond creak. Knowing that today it wouldn’t simply be drying our gear on a rock keeping dry actually became quite a priority. We got there around 11am and saw car and other odd things that reinforced that we were back in the ‘real world’. With all of the trips they do the river companies have all the logistics down to a fine art and this was brought home when all the rafts and all the gear were broken down and loaded onto the back of one truck. The local native Americans who own this land are quite a reserved people and therefore we were told that if we needed to pee in the river we should go out of site behind some bushes first. You really know the river is a different world when this is defiantly something that requires saying.
The road out of the canyon is very bumpy, much of it is actually up a river bed so is must get ripped up whenever there is any water in this river. The owners of this land charge $50 per person to come up here, oh well this must be one of the few ways of making any money with there very difficult land. Looking at their town it is clear that this isn’t making them rich at all.
We drive back to town and although we are all tiered there is a number of conversations going on, the in-jokes that have developed out here are clearly quite remarkable in such a short time. Thinking back to being in the same bus two weeks (or a lifetime ) ago when we were put in the atmosphere is just so different, and so much better.
We stop at what has to be the most tacky tourist town I have even seen (and I have been to Rotorua), where the whole town goes over the top celebrating route 66. Every building has paintings and collections of artifacts of some mythical 1950’s of the soul.
Got back to Flagstaff and court up with the world, it is interesting that while things have happened (missing children, earthquakes, tsunamis etc) that are clearly significant you can really be out of the modern world for 2 weeks and it really only takes a few minutes to catch up as if you never left, it does remind you that you can spend a whole lot of time with the trivia that is called news because there is nothing else on but at the end of the day very little of it actually matters.
Spent way to long in the shower getting much of the sand off (I am sure there is much more to come) before I went off to the group dinner. It was great to spend one last evening with these people, even if it was a little odd realizing we would never be all together like this again. It was also interesting to see closer how people look cleaned up (I got told I looked, taller, thinner and younger so I guess it might have had some effect on me). There were some of those moments where the things of real life just become issues, like working out how much we all had to pay, oh how easy is life when you don’t have such issues.
There is talk that spent this amount of time in the canyon can change a person. I guess the only way to know that is after a bit of time but short term it does kinda fell like it has. Not certain how but it does just fell a little bit different I don’t feel like I would let thing get to me, but that might just be that I am really relaxed.
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