Today was great. We only worked about a half day clearing the tamarisk in the lower portion of the creek, down close to the river. We worked like mad though. We could hear the roar from Granite Rapid all the while we were working at that was pretty cool. Kim ran out of herbicide right around noon so that's when we called it quits. We all went down to the Colorado River for to have lunch and hang out there, above the rapid, for a couple of hours.

While we were working on the tamarisk Kim sat on a baby snake and I think it was a Grand Canyon pink rattlesnake. The markings and color looked about right but it did not have any rattles yet. It was only about 8 inches long. We thought it was dead at first but I moved it away from where we were working and it eventually recovered and disappeared into the brush on the other side of the creek.

After lunch Kim worked on totaling the numbers and the final count was 3,042 tamarisk plants cut or uprooted, Woo Hoo!

On the way back to camp we spotted 3 California condors and hung out for about a half hour watching them. They seemed to be watching us as well though and it turned out to be a rather boring staring contest.

After watching the condors for a while Kim and I heading back to camp using the waterfall route we used yesterday again. It was cool to see it with more light in there. Ryan had gone back to check on his dad who had fallen far behind and we figure we would all meet up back at camp and then hike up-canyon later that afternoon.

Kim and I waited at camp for probably 20-30 minutes longer and they never showed up so we took off up-canyon by ourselves. We went up the west fork of Monument Creek to just about midway into the Bright Angel formation. We spotted 3 Grand Canyon bighorn sheep, all males, back there and there was also a nice little seep spring right where the route cliffed-out in the Bright Angel. On the way back we crossed over the Tonto into the eastern arm of the creek, explored up that a little way, and then headed back to camp. On the way back we discovered a mule deer foraging for food just about ¼-mile above our camp. It was a great day for wildlife spotting.

We had tuna helper for dinner tonight, talked again while the stars came out and then retired to our sleeping areas. I was very beat again and could wait to lay down and close my eye... and drea... Canyon dreams. Tomorrow morning the canyon wrens will wake me up again as the have these previous two mornings. Canyon wrens make great alarm clocks.

The plan for tomorrow morning is to skip breakfast and be on the trail early. I am hoping to rim-out by noon.