May 30th was my last day at Killip Elementary school in Flagstaff. I am now retired following an amazing and rewarding 27-year career in public education. The next day (the actual last day of school) I launched on an eight-day, one boat motor trip through Grand Canyon on the Colorado River.

It was a magical trip with 13 close friends and family. We were guided down the river by three amazing humans, a boatwoman, swamper and assistant. Their stories will come later.

In thinking through how to blog about such a wonderful experience I became overwhelmed with the thought of not giving it the attention it needs. By writing a one week blog and calling it good. I can’t do that. I came home with over 4800 images, memories to last a lifetime and stories that could be turned into a book. I don’t write books, I write short little weekly blogs.

SO! To help me process through the images and the experience I will be posting for the next several weeks, or until I run out of images and stories to share. As I process the images and become inspired by them all over again I will post, so hang on for the ride as you join me on my river trip and let ME be your guide this time.

I’ve never posted videos here before but I took a lot on this trip. 110 to be exact. This first batch is some fun time-lapse images I captured of everyday chores at camp.

Here is the bag line. It used to be called the fire line when I started river running in the mid 80’s but now it’s a bag line. It is a super efficient way to move our piles of stuff. Yes, even here in Grand Canyon we spend time managing stuff. There are 28 blue bags, one is a sleep kit complete with sleeping bag, tarp and sheet. The other is our “need it only at camp” bag. On an airplane, you would check it into the belly of the plane.

We all slept on these pads. They are quite comfy, especially with sand as the base. No one used a tent…ever. The boat crew slept on the boat.

Ahhh, the cots. The eleven folks that slept on these swore by them. Ellen, Craig and I did not. But they did create opportunity for more bag lines.

Apparently, I can’t arrange the videos in any order I want. Bummer. I would have this one last because it is the last thing we do…get on the boat. Each morning at loading time we chose our locations. Sometimes we mixed it up, sometimes not. The front of the boat got the wettest, even in little riffles. The boatwoman, Amity, steered from the rear of the vessel while Will and Tierany (the rest of the crew)  traveled around the raft checking on the passengers. The area closest to the motor well was deemed the Chicken Coup. Folks there stayed pretty dry except in the large rapids. Then they got sprinkled. 😉

We went with Arizona River Adventures out of Flagstaff. They provided us with many things, one of which was a chair. 14 of these things fit in that green dry bag. It wasn’t busy but the Johnson brothers, Craig and Scott, became the chair packing experts. They figured out exactly how to prepare the chairs and insert them into the bag successfully. Thank you, Craig and Scott!

Here’s another bag line set at every four seconds. It goes fast, maybe too fast, but also includes putting on sunscreen.

Timelapse is a lot of fun. It can be very gear oriented and time-consuming to do professional quality imagery or, like me, you can use the settings on your camera and either hand hold or use a tripod. I believe these were all handheld but then again I wasn’t holding them for 30 minutes, only a few.

I took just two cameras with me, a Canon S120 with a waterproof housing and my Lumix Gx8 with a 14-150 mm lens in a small drybag so I could access it and shoot on the boat. Both shoot timelapse, the Canon shoots it in miniature effect.

Pull out your manual and look up timelapse on your camera. If you have a choice start with a frame every two seconds and set it to stop after 300 frames. My camera then makes a video with the stills but keeps the stills separately. I will erase them later. It’s fun to shoot things that take a long time. Start with making dinner or the bed or washing dishes or something. It’s a lot of fun.

Happy shooting!