Flagstaff to Lee's Ferry

Wednesday, November 20th 2013

 PRO arrived at our motel at 10 am with a passenger van and a big truck full of equipment and all our beer that had been delivered to their warehouse on our behalf. We loaded our packs and barrels full of camping gear onto the truck and set off on the 3 hour drive to Lee's Ferry. On the outskirts of Flagstaff, we stopped at a big food store to each pick up some lunch items for the trip.
It was at that point that Jeffy Johnson realized that he'd left his 'passport' back at the motel. Four of our group went ahead in the truck to unload the rafts and inflate them while the rest of us waited at the food store for Jeffy and the van driver to go back to the motel. It wasn't much of a wait and before long we were off in a cloud of smoke.

 It rained off and on all the way to Lee's Ferry. When we got there the rain let up and we spent a couple of hours rigging and loading the rafts. PRO has a really good system so all our gear fit, including almost 3,000 cans of beer, the most that PRO had ever sent on a trip. The park ranger jokingly asked to see our liquor license, and he didn't even see the packs with the hard liquor.

That night we camped just a couple hundred metres downstream from Lee's Ferry. PRO had 2 vans to take us to a little gas station diner for dinner. The lodge where they usually take people had burned the year before. The food wasn't too bad but since we were a large group, the service was very slow. This was our last time spending money for the next 3 weeks. We settled back into camp fairly early. It rained a bit in the night - a taste of the weather to come.