Well, hello everyone! No, I haven't fallen into the river in my sleep and gone on downstream (which by the way, if you don't know me too well, is a pretty good possibility). I am still alive and done with the summer, and about to resume life as I knew it and be able to come back into blogosphere; at least a little more anyway.

The summer has been a really good one. I did 10 trips in Grand Canyon and I am pretty ready to be done. My mom was able to come on the second to last one with me and my dad was able to come on the last one and I was so stoked to have them see what I do and be able to see the canyon. I don't think they do it too bad, but I think it's hard not to think that a summer on the river is a relaxing, all fun summer job, which, in fact it is, but it's also pretty hard work and sometimes not the most engaging groups of people are a little hard to spend a week at a time with. My mom was able to come on Cat with me a few times, but my dad hasn't been able to and this time I was able to give him some notice so he could plan for it and it was great to have him there. I've been able to drive a lot and it's been really fun. I've done pretty well except for one rapid that is my nemesis, Grapevine, but it's all been really fun to drive. Here's a bunch of pics in no particular order from all during the summer.

This is from the red wall cavern. A stitched together panorama. One of the passengers sent this to me.

It started raining one day after we had rigged the boats and it was so amazing!! This water fall started after it had only been raining for 10 minutes. It was so cool.

I wasn't able to be around when my brother Jesse left on his mission because I was on a trip, but we got to go climbing just the two of us the day before I left. It was great. He's now in Paraguay after 9 weeks in the MTC and I'm so glad I was able to spend that time with him. He's such a great kid.

On our way to Lee's Ferry we saw this RV totally in flames. The people who owned it were all just hanging out in their camp chairs just watching it burn. It started in the breaks and ended up engulfing the whole thing. It was crazy!

This is one of my favorite pics of the summer. It's at the place in the canyon called Granite Narrows, it's the narrowest place in the canyon, it's 76 feet wide.

This was on a tip in June.
And this was the first week of June, and I was freezing. This summer was weird. It was pretty cold for the middle of the summer. Then the next trip:

It was so hot that I burned my arm on some coolers. When we were loading all the stuff into the truck, I got my arm caught between two aluminum coolers and you can see the little circle where there was a screw and it didn't burn. I think it was 115 degrees at South Cove and this picture was taken a few days after when the blisters had popped. This summer really wasn't too hot, but it stayed hot for a while. We were spoiled in June and July with cloudy trips.

My friend Garrett and my brother, Eric and I went to the Great Salt Lake, out to Antelope Island on a break a little while ago. It was really cool. I hadn't been swimming in the lake for like 16 years and it is amazing. I was more buoyant than when I swim with my life jacket on. If any of you haven't been in a while, you should go for sure. Garrett took a bunch of really cool pictures and this one is my favorite.

It was great having my mom come on the trip. Everyone loved her.

This is at Havasu and I love how dramatic my mom is plugging her nose for that huge 5 foot jump. But this next one is my favorite two pictures of her from the trip

We had a lot of wild life on the trip. That's a ring tail cat that we usually leave out the dessert for so that hopefully we'll see them. They're just so cute!
I got a black light and scorpions show up so great under that light and at one camp, my mom's little nook of trees had 5 scorpions just around her! It was crazy. There was like 25 at that camp.
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Here I am blabbin away about the geology of the canyon.

There was a pretty cool guy, Mike that came on the trip with my mom and he's really great, but unfortunately he lives in South Carolina.
The trip my dad came on, there was some amazing scenery!
That's the Vishnu Temple in the background. This is a pretty typical camp scene.

My dad got to come on the 7 day trip so we got to stop at some other places that we didn't get to do on my mom's 6 day trip. This is called Stone Creek waterfall.
The others in our group got my dad all dressed up for the toga party.

This is from the Lava Chuar camp on night 2. It's one of my favorite camps.

I really do love showing people the canyon and being able to be down there all summer is amazing, but this is a great bonus as well :)

Anyway, congratulations if you've stuck around this long to read all of these. This is how I feel at the end of this summer. It was a great year and I had a great season, but I'm ready for it to be over! And hopefully you'll see more of me on here. I'm back into life! Thanks for reading!