Show and Tell Tuesday- Favorite Vacation!

Good Morning!  Today, I am linking up with Andrea for her Show and Tell Tuesday Series!  Today's topic is: Favorite Vacation!  

I feel like any vacation I go on is my favorite- HA!  

I love going to the beach with my family and we also love to go camping.  For today's post, I wanted to share an EXTRA special, once in a lifetime vacation I took with my dad in the summer of 2004.  For my graduation present from graduate school, my dad and I spent 7 days rafting 89 miles of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.  It was absolutely SPECTACULAR!  

We started our trip at the "top" of the Colorado River at a place called Lee's Ferry.

We chose to do an "All Paddle" trip meaning we had a guide in our boat with 4 other people- and we were paddling the whole time.  It was a perfect mix of nice and easy paddling AND paddling for our lives through INSANE rapids.  

We camped every night on the banks of the Colorado River and it was so awesome.  We had tents to sleep in, but the weather was so beautiful, that a couple nights, I slept out under the stars with some other people on our trip.  My dad preferred the tent every night :)  We ate SO well...our trip guides were amazing and did such a good job taking care of every aspect of our trip!

One of the highlights of our trip was when we stopped and "body surfed" rapids on a tributary of the Colorado River, called Havasu Creek.  

You can see in the pictures...the water looks like we are in the Caribbean!! 

Check out my Dad riding the waves!

We went on several incredible hikes, explored so many amazing areas of the Grand Canyon and just had an absolutely amazing time!

My dad is one of my best friends and it was so special to share this experience with him.  

We ended our trip by hiking the Bright Angel Trail to get to the top of the Grand Canyon.  The way they do the rafting trips, you can either choose to do the Upper Canyon, Lower Canyon or the entire length of the Colorado River.  People who choose to do the Upper Canyon have to hike Bright Angel Trail out.  People who choose to the Lower Canyon, hike down the Bright Angel Trail.  So as we were hiking up the Canyon, we saw people headed down the trail to start the lower portion of the rafting trip we were just on.  The Bright Angel Trail is NO JOKE.  It is 7.5 miles and you are pretty much hiking straight up the whole time.  There were definitely some moments where I thought we were in a living hell.  HA!  It was SO hot and it just didn't feel like we were making any progress!  We finally made it to the top and I can't tell you how relieved, exhausted and exhilarated my dad and I felt.  We were pretty proud of ourselves! :)

My Dad and I still talk about how amazing our trip was...it was an AWESOME experience that created so many precious memories for my dad and me.

The company we used for our trip was Arizona Raft Adventures and I highly recommend them.  They are extremely organized, took care of everything while we were on the river, planned and served us delicious meals and our guides were awesome.  

I hope you have a wonderful day and if you have any questions about our trip- I would love to answer them!  Also- if you contact Arizona Raft Adventures they are super nice and great about answering general questions if you are curious about possibly going on a rafting trip!!