Posts Tagged: Utah

For his 60th birthday, my father, who has always loved hiking, mountaineering, and the outdoors, decided he wanted to go on an adventure with his family. He settled on rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon as his expedition of choice. Unfortunately, Grand Canyon trips tend to fill up as early as two years in advance, and we weren’t able to book one. Instead, we decided to raft the Colorado through Cataract Canyon.

I grew up backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but for most of my childhood, I hadn’t done much backpacking anywhere else. So the summer after my eighth grade year, I spent three weeks on trip through the American southwest on a trip with nine other students my age. We met at Oakland International Airport and flew to Las Vegas, where we met our trip leaders, Courtney and Porter. We spent almost all of the first day driving to Zion National Park in southwestern Utah.