Havasupai!

Hello Folks,
Heidi and I have had a couple of pretty amazing weeks! Our most recent adventure involved a trip to Arizona to see some sweet blue-green waterfalls in Havasupai. It was a really long, hot walk to get there, but that made it so there were fewer people there. It was actually a much worse walk out to the car because we had used up all of our downhill privileges on the hike in :(
The hike was worth it though, and we got to the awesome waterfalls around high noon. It was really hot and we were eager to get into the water, but we had to wait for the others in the group so we would know where we were camping. We will have you know that although you could pay for a donkey to take your backpack down the canyon, Heidi and I toughed it out and carried our backpacks ourselves. Heidi's brother, sister-in-law, and two brothers-in-law did as well, and we were the first ones down to the bottom. It must have been the extra weight that we had that pushed us down so fast.
We saw some awesome waterfalls. We really enjoyed Havasu Falls, where we were able to go behind the waterfall and dive out on the side. When we were climbing back that I was grateful to know that no one would notice a little extra water that may have been produced from excessive stress and fear. I was scared because it felt like I was going to get sucked under any minute, and it was so hard to hold on with your hands. (For those interested, it's a lot easier to use your feet to climb in the back, but it doesn't seem like you can do that for a while even though you can. Also, I don't think there was any sucking action, except mostly in my imagination) All of the mist and pressure changes made it kind of hard to breathe, and really hard to see, but it was so nice to dive out into the sunlight where it was so quiet and bright!
We went to Mooney Falls, which includes an incredible (read: dangerous) hike down to the bottom of the falls. It's really steep (I hope we captured that in the photos) and some of the steps are pretty small and slippery, both from a lot of use as well as waterfall mist. We both really liked that hike and did it twice because it was so fun!
We left the canyon at 3:30 am to make sure that we would beat the heat out of the canyon. We did, but it was a little hairy for the first little bit on the trail. Things look a lot different in the dark and moving in the opposite direction. We made it out safely, though, and were even followed by a dog that we had to give to some hippies that were going into the town to "save the puppies" or something like that. We affectionately named it "Darkwing", or sometimes "Dumb Dog".
Just so that everyone knows, Heidi and my hiking and Havasupai expertise are up for hire when you are ready to travel there in the next little while. We have a very reasonable price, and managed to pack in way more food than anyone could eat (except for the squirrels, they were pretty good at eating everything).