DAY 2 MY HAVASUPAI ADVENTURE

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Isa 43:2,3 I know this is a long post, but it is a journey.

The day began with a great cup of coffee deciding what we would do for the day. Charity was asking around if anyone had seen her coffee. She had a whole bag in a ziplock full of those new VIA coffees from Starbucks. No one had and she did a frantic search in her tent, pack and food storage. She had left it on the table the night before when we all went to bed. It was so strange and she was a bit sad. She said she had also put some trail mix, and power bars in the bag as well. We chalked it up to an animal or something who needed his caffeine fix and so she had tea instead.

We started off after breakfast with a trip to Mooney Falls. The first thing we saw when we reached the top was a herd of sheep getting drinks. That was an amazing site! It is rare to see sheep like that but they seemed very used to people around them.

It was not a far hike to get there but to get to the bottom was a bit more tricky. The first clue was the "Descend at Your Own Risk" sign located before you go through a small tunnel. I was so excited to get to the bottom. Not all of us went because of knees and such. One of the gals in front of me was very nervous and wanted Dana to talk her down as she went. I was fine at this point but I started to see chains and metal spikes driven into the wall in which you had to climb down to get to the bottom. There was a second tunnel and then you could see the clearing to the bottom. This is where I panicked. There was a ladder to climb to, but it was not connected to the rock. It was a big stretch and the incline completely vertical. The gal in front of me went down and I saw the ladder move away from the wall, this is where I freaked. I knew I could do it but there was so much fear and nervousness that I started to bawl. Real mature, I know. I cried and climbed all the way to the bottom, holding very tightly to the hanging chains. Dana gave me a big hug because I was so frazzled.

The falls were beautiful! The most lovely color and very cold! I forgot to bring my suit, so I jumped in with my clothes. The mist from the fall as I was standing in this majestic pool of water was very invigorating! Some of the other girls traveled down the stream a bit to the smaller pools of falls while I decided my swim was long enough and I needed to warm up in the sun.

We all traveled around to Havasu Falls, baked in the sun, had lunch and chatted away. It was very relaxing and we met my little friend "Supaui", a beautiful puppy with one blue eye and one brown eye. He followed us wherever we went. When we crossed the stream he would find a way to be with us. I think beef jerky had a sway in his love for us, but I was hooked. Tari also loved Supai and the two of us would just coo on this little guy. His personality was so sweet, he actually posed for pictures. He had obviously done this before, but my beef jerky seemed very fond of him as well.

After this, we split up as a group. Dana and I decided we wanted to see Beaver Falls which was another hike and others were not interested in going. You had to go down the chain and tunnel at Mooney Falls to get to the trail for Beaver Falls. Supai followed us all the way until he could not go down the wall. He sat there crying for us at the top with those sweet little eyes whimpering away. That totally broke my heart! As we were traveling along we learned the trail was a good three plus miles away from Mooney and it was already 4 p.m. That would mean we might have to climb up that same cliff in the dark with our headlamps and that did not make me feel at ease.

The trail to Beaver was not as worn as the others. It weaved in and out of the water as well as not being very marked.There was no one on it either. That creeped me out a bit. When we had gone about a mile or so the trail ran out and it was swimming to get to the next part. Dana was not wanting to get into the water so we decided we should go back. We were at a section where some one had done some wall art in the canyon rock. A Buddha and a dragon were drawn and we decided to take pictures. There was a cave on one side and the stream on the other and we suddenly heard a growl.I am not sure what the sound was or where it came from, but it freaked me. I felt very alone out there and it had been a long time since seeing other people in this trail that had a lot of tree coverage and was not a clear path. I wanted to go, especially because of the animal sound that we could not see and also because we were running out of daylight time and I did not want to get stuck out there! We headed back, climbed the Mooney Falls (it was much less scary for me this time and I did not even panic once) back up again, and ran into two adventures that had just come back from Beaver Falls.

We asked them how far down the falls were and they had underwater cameras in which they had shot video of getting there. You actually had to swim underwater through a cave that was dark to get to the other side. I know Dana did not want to do that but it looked so beautiful and exciting. We were passing by a cave in the rock about 100 feet up and they asked if we wanted to try rock climbing to it. Now I have never rock climbed and was a bit hesitant. I told Dana I would stay and wait for her but she pressured me into going. They taught us how to do it and we slowly made our way to the cave entrance. The cave was amazing! It was pitch black and we all had our headlamps on to see. Luckily we did not see any beady little eyes staring back at us. The cave was being mined for different minerals, it glistened with the light shone on it. It went back about a half a mile and was so cool. I took a few of the smaller pieces and I am going to try to make a necklace out of them.

At this point it occurred to me that Dana and I were alone in a cave with two strange men and everyone else thinks we are at Beaver Falls. Probably not very smart of us. They were very nice and knew a lot about outdoor experiences. One had actually spent his career traveling around the world teaching others how to mountain bike, hike canyons, river rafting, etc. He was at least experienced in that realm, and he did not seem like a murderer. We stuck together and took some pictures, touched a lot of the different minerals and decided we better leave. We climbed down and that was a bit more frightening than going up. It was hard to get a good grip on the rocks without feeling like you were just going to fall off. This was a highlight in my trip, I would have never tried that on my own and I was in awe of the whole experience.

We left them and headed back to camp. It was dinnertime and getting dark. While we all made dinner, we sampled the food again. We were much more chatty this night compared to the last, probably the sleep factor. We sat around at night in a circle chatting when Noel, who had brought a guitar and a flute started to play. We sang hymns and worship songs and really just worshipped this great God who crated all this glory. It was a time I will not forget, to be out here in this Canyon and to be able to sing praises to the God who created it, just took my breath away. I know His presence was there and the singing was beautiful.

As we were singing, Susie let out a little yelp. By this time it was totally dark and you could not see much. She said she saw something in the tree that was hanging over our heads. We stopped singing to look and sure enough, there were four little beady eyes staring at us. We got the camera, took some photos and named the little rascals Abraham and Sarah. They were ring tailed cats, they looked similar to a raccoon and a cat. They watched us watching them for a long time and then climbed straight up the canyon wall that was next to us. We talked a bit more and then decided to go to sleep.

Dana and I were a little wired in our tents and talked a long time. It was about 12:30 and she said she heard something outside our tent. I got out to check and we did not see anything. She was spooked and we had to go to the bathroom by this time. We got our lamps and flashlights and traveled to the bathroom together. Along the way we could see eyes looking back at us in the trees with the light,that was so freaky! It took us a long time to get to sleep but we knew we had better try. The last time we looked at the time in was 1:30 and we knew we needed to get some rest for our trip out of the canyon.