The Life & Times of Gene & Joyce: A Exciting Day

Thursday was a exciting day for me, laundry day for Joyce. Since she didn’t want to do these things she was okay with staying behind and taking care of some household chores.

First off, I went on a half-day 4x4 offroad excursion – with Melissa and Old Blue. Here they are.

There were two other people with us – supposed to be 2 more but they didn’t show.

We went to part of Arches National Park that 98% of the people never see. The reason is the road getting there. Our main destination was Tower Arch. After we turned off the paved road it wasn’t too long before this road…

…became this road…

…and this road…

You get the idea. I had lots of fun letting another driver bounce someone else’s car over huge boulders. We never bottomed out but the tail did drag a few times. An interesting side note: this is a 2000 Ford Excursion with 1,000 miles less than my 2000 Ford F250 – 169,000 to 170,000.

This is what we went to see – along with too many other odd shaped rocks to post their pictures here. Tower Arch. The arch is in the middle of the picture with the tower behind it.

These are the March Men.

And simply wild back country. God’s creation is so varied and interesting.

After the 4x4 trip I was dropped off for a raft trip down the Colorado River.

To raft the Colorado has always been a dream. Now understand, this was NOT the Grand Canyon or a lot of big rapids. It was a half day with a couple class II rapids, but it was the Colorado. We were in an oar boat (meaning our guide rowed, we road). But our guide managed to make it interesting. As we approached the first rapids I decided to take some pictures. After all, what could go wrong? I grabbed the safety rope with one hand, my camera in the other and knelt on the bottom of the boat so I wouldn’t be thrown out. Here is the first picture I took.

Just to my left was a big roller (wave) that was bigger than the guide anticipated (maybe 4-5 feet high). We hit it head on. The front of the raft went up with water pouring over everyone including me (and I was in the back). If I was a professional photographer I probably would have snapped a couple pictures of the deluge coming at me. But me being me, I hung on tight and wondered if were going to flip. We did not flip the raft but we did flip a lady out. She hung onto the safety rope and the guide hauled her back in. Everyone was throughly soaked including me. My camera was wet so I didn’t try to take any more pictures until we stopped for lunch. But it seemed to be okay. Here is lunch set out on a rocky beach. Joyce will be happy to show you the rock I took back to her.