Almost immediately: Hance Rapid; The first of a long series of Harder Rapids was encountered a mile into the day today. It seems like Rapids look worse when you scout them beforehand. The River is a super powerful beast and in many ways we are just along for the ride! The walls of the inner gorge were absolutely beautiful today. Towering, dark, almost an evil brilliance in them! Super powerful eddys. Beautiful day today (Zion the sun) too! Today we had our only reel taste of civilization: Phantom Ranch! We parked the boats at “Boat Beach” and hiked a bit less than a mile. What does civilization have in store for us? A guy named Samo who was quite nice to chat with, 3 Beers in the canteen! You read that right, they serve beer at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Three types, in fact. I learned you could send and receive mail there too. How cool would it be to receive a letter at the bottom of the Grand Canyon? I didn’t, but it certainly made me brainstorm about who I could sent letters to... Overall the group concerns was that we’d rather be in the wilderness rather than this small taste of civilization. Noise, money exchange, working phones: in all honesty it’s a bit over rated. We hopped on our boats and continued down the river. There was an area referred to as “Sketchy Eddy” and it was sketchy. We kind of got stuck for a couple of minutes trying to get out. Also, river hydraulics are amazing and powerful: seems like half our boat was sucked underwater by one of them! We camped at “Across from Pipe Creek” and had a grand time as usual. Unload the boats, setup camp, make some food, relax by the fire; a pattern we are starting to get used to now. Another great day on the river!