Vassey's Paradise.  Named for the 1869 Powell Survey botanist.

Day 3 turned out to be damn near perfect.  The winds were down and while they hadn't gone away, they were no longer the powerful force that had so impeded our travel the day before.  After a breakfast of pancakes, canadian bacon and boiled river coffee we set out.  First stop, Vassey's Paradies, pair of springs feeding a glorious green clad slope from the canyon wall to the river's edge a few hundred yards below South Canyon.  Although water flows were down significantly from 1999, we replenished our water supply and enjoyed the greenery - at a respectful distance as most of it is poison ivy!

From Vassey's it's a short trip to Red Wall Cavern.  Set deep into the canyon wall, the cavern is a huge covered beach that extends over 100 yards into the rock wall.  There we lunched, played football and admired the canyon.  We also met up with a group on baloney boats with a character who called himself "Donkey."  He took an interest in "pig-tails," meaning Erika.  He was, like most of those on his boat, drunk - they'd started at 7am!  Thus was born the First Half catch phrase, "it's donkey time!"

From Red Wall we floated down river to our next camp at Triple Alcoves at Mile 47.  At President Harding Rapid, Rick steered the Fubar into a giant, towering rock located in the middle of the rapid.  Looked pretty funny, but it was a harbinger of things to come for the Fubar.  Triple Alcoves is a canyon with three branches that enters on river right.  The beach wasn't much, but there was an enormous camping area of sand, trees and shade up behind the beach.  I played mp3's for a while before drifting off to sleep.  Happy hour set the right tone and dinner was excellent.

Looking upstream from Redwall Canyon	Monica and Tamara enjoying the cool water of Vassey's	Looking downstream from Redwall