Glen Canyon Float Trip - BLInspirations

By Laurie

Note: This post is one of a series about my 2015 Western Parks vacation with my daughter and grandson. For our itinerary with links to other posts and an overview of this trip, please see 2015 Western Parks Vacation.

On the same day we visited the Secret Slot Canyon, our morning activity was a float trip on the Colorado River below the Glen Canyon Dam. The trip started with a bus ride through a two-mile tunnel used to access the base of the Glen Canyon Dam. Once there, we walked down a long access ramp to the river and the rafts. The rafts were constructed with four inflated pontoons with a center foot well and powered with an outboard motor. Each raft held about 20 people. Outer passengers sat on or straddled the pontoons while those on the inside sat on platforms over the pontoons with their feet in the foot well.

The tour was a relaxing 15 miles long, from the Glen Canyon Dam to Lee’s Ferry. Our pilot/guide was very informative, pointing out geographical features and wildlife. We saw Sandhill Cranes, Blue Herons, egrets, and a hawk. Other people have reported seeing Bald Eagles and Desert Bighorn Sheep in Glen Canyon but we didn’t see either. About midway during our trip, we stopped to see petroglyphs which were made by Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) about 800 years ago. As we floated around Horseshoe Bend, people at the top of the canyon (1000 feet up) were shouting down to us and we were shouting back to them. Later we stopped at a beach for swimming but the water was too cold even for wading. The bus trip from Lee’s Ferry back to Page was an hour long because the road goes a long way around a mountain.

With the exception of the petroglyph panorama (which was taken with my iPhone), these photos were taken with my Canon PowerShot A75 because I didn’t want to take my good camera on the water. (It appears that the camera time is incorrect by a few minutes as I believe the iPhone time is correct.)

Update: I found another photo of the base of the Glen Canyon Dam (taken the previous day during our tour of the dam) that shows the tunnel opening, parking area, river access ramp and several rafts tied along the river and have added it to the Additional Images gallery.