A peaceful voyage in Glen Canyon

Glen Canyon, the portion of the Colorado River between Page, Ariz., and Lee's Ferry, surrounds a visitor in the sort of sounds and sights that haunt our best daydreams. Red-tailed hawks and vultures soar the ever-present thermals and voices echo off the 1,000-foot vertical cliffs. Red cliffs and sky, seen twice when counting their reflection in the deep waters, are doubly striking.

A half-day float trip down this smooth, 15-mile section provides an alternative opportunity to experience the Colorado River that doesn't require the days, daring, and dollars involved in the more famous float trips through the turbulent Grand Canyon.

The adventure starts even before my husband, Richard, and I get on the river. We meet up with our group at the Colorado River Discovery office in downtown Page, board a bus and head for the "tunnel." This two-mile long, eight-percent-grade tunnel, completed in 1958, was built to get equipment and workers down to the river to build Glen Canyon Dam.

Since this is a Homeland Security site, before we enter the tunnel we must leave the bus and load purses, backpacks and camera bags (you can keep your camera, but not the bag) into the back of a pickup, then we get back on the bus. The pickup travels through the tunnel, then the bus slowly follows. When I step off the bus I'm handed the mandatory blue hard hat. This is to protect my noggin from falling rocks or something thrown off the canyon walls, 700 feet above.

After a short walk down a ramp to the water's edge, I trade my hard hat for my bag, and board the big, blue raft that holds 22 people. The company can run as many as 20 rafts; while I was there an employee was booking several of them in a single deal for a family reunion.

River water below the dam has just run out the "bottom" of Lake Powell at only 47-50 degrees, definitely a deterrent for swimmers. Air temperature in the canyon varies. In early morning hours, it will be cooler than the rim weather, but by afternoon the canyon walls have absorbed solar heat and are radiating it back into the atmosphere, so the space between them can get downright hot. Wind or rain can make the trip chilly, so the best advice is to dress in layers; then you are prepared for whatever Mother Nature wants to dish out.

Mikaela and B.J., young women too cautious to tell anybody their last names, are our captain and crew, maintaining a running dialogue of river facts and jokes.

Our float trip is through the only portion of Glen Canyon not filled by Lake Powell. Here, at the base of the dam, the Navajo sandstone walls are a coral color, with black streaks called desert varnish and strips of shocking green foliage, where water seeps to plant roots through the porous sandstone.

The morning sun highlights the western side of the river and the afternoon sun makes the eastern walls glow. Shadows add depth and mystery, bringing out the camera snappers. The river has a mystique all its own, each curve bringing a view that seems prettier than the last one. Heading downstream, the canyon gradually deepens, leaving a strip of blue sky above.

At Honey Draw, we cross the trip's only "rapid," which we experience as a slight bump in the posterior.

It seems that each rock formation has its own unusual name and it takes some imagination to pick out what the figure represents. I have to look several times before I can discern "Monks Coming Out of the Canyon."

You are most likely to see wildlife if you schedule your trip in the early morning. Even on the afternoon trip, I spot a red-tailed hawk, a vulture, a mallard duck and a blue heron. On some trips people see bighorn sheep and condors, which can have wingspans of 12 feet. We see fishermen hoping to catch rainbow trout. I don't know whether the fish are biting, but we see plenty of them in the river.

The walls vary from red to buff and slabs of rock have fallen away leaving arch-shaped alcoves. I peer into narrow side canyons and gaze up at V-shaped notches at the top of the canyon, imagining what a sight this would be with waterfalls gushing from those notches, as they must during rare downpours.

Distances can be deceiving in the canyon. Stopping along the shore, B.J. points to the stalk of a large agave, and asks the rafters to guess its height. We agree it's 6 to 8 feet. Then Mikaela scrambles ashore to stand next to the shaft, which dwarfs her. It is actually more than 20 feet tall.

Forty-five minutes into the float trip, we pull over at Petro Beach. The attractions are a primitive toilet and primitive art. The latter lies at end of a quarter-mile hike, where we see petroglyphs scratched into the sand-colored wall by the Ancestral Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi. Six etched antelope march across the wall, along with humanlike motifs and strange geometrical designs. The rock art panel is about 15 feet long.

Next comes Horseshoe Bend where the river curves almost 360 degrees. Up on the rim we see hikers looking down at us. They are merely white spots, but we yell and wave at them anyway.

Where the 1,000-foot-high cliffs dominate the chasm like skyscrapers along a city street, we pull alongside another raft. The other boat captain brings out an American Indian flute and plays mystic notes that float up between soaring walls, another reminder that ancient peoples wandered this canyon thousands of years ago.

The river broadens and the canyon walls shrink. We are nearing Lee's Ferry, named for the actual ferry established in 1871 by Mormon pioneer John D. Lee. Lee was executed in 1877 for his part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, 20 years after the crime and the only participant to pay such a penalty. One of his wives, Emma Lee, sold the ferry in 1879, and others operated it until 1928 when a bridge opened nearby.

Lee's Fort remains, along with his Lonely Dell Ranch. The river still holds tightly to the remains of "The Charles H. Spencer," a steamboat built to haul coal upriver. The Colorado River current was too strong for the boat to go upstream so it was abandoned at Lee's Ferry, its remains still poking out of the river that captured it.

This is the end of our float trip and as we board the bus for our 43-mile ride back to Page, I see a red-tailed hawk making slow circles.

I envy his home -- the mysterious walls of Glen Canyon.