101 Main St / P.O. Box 118
Bluff, Utah 84512-0118 Fax (435) 672-2365 Toll Free (800) 422-7654 
The $100 daily is only good for a short time. Give us a call today to take one of the finest day trips in the country and to save $$$. The fine print goes like this: 1. This deal applies to day trips between July 8 and August 31, 2012. 2. You must have at least four passengers in your party, so bring your friends along for the fun! 3. You must make your reservation after February 1, 2012 and before May 1st, 2012. (That means paying a deposit of ⅓ of your total trip, with the remaining balance due 30 days prior.) 4. We’ll cover your $6 BLM fee inclusive in the $100, which means that our inflation equivalent of the $12.50, plus a recreational use fee that would have been unheard of in 1957 works out just right. |
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 The $100 Daily!
Location: Upper canyon; 26 miles from Bluff to Mexican Hat 
 OverviewKenny Ross started running commercial river trips out of Bluff on the San Juan River as Wild Rivers Expeditions in 1957. Our day trip from Bluff to Mexican Hat was, and still is, the mainstay of this company. The day trip provides an opportunity for visitors to our area to see the San Juan without a lot of prior notice, and without the commitment of several days in the midst of a regional tour. We admit bias, but we think it is one of the best ways that you can spend a day in this region. There’s boating and a river, there’s rock art and ruins, there’s crazy, huge geologic processes, there’s a nice lunch and a guide who just can’t help but share their favorite place with you...As most of you know, we’re celebrating the 55 years that our company has run trips on this river in any way that we can this season and we wanted to offer a special daily sale in honor of the occasion. Kenny’s trips in 1957 cost $12.50. We knew we just couldn’t match that rate in 2012. We found ourselves thinking about offering the $100 daily. That’s more than ⅓ off our usual daily fare, so we had to ask ourselves if we were just crazy to even consider it. We just liked the sound of it. And eventually, with a few stipulations, we decided to go for it. Here’s the funny thing. Just out of curiosity we used one of the inflation calculators online to see what Kenny’s $12.50 per day in 1957 was comparable to today. Of course, there are a lot of overhead costs associated with regulations and requirements that Kenny would never have dreamed of today, which makes us kind of sad and sometimes worried...but we thought we’d just look anyway. And the answer was $95. So that settled it: For 55 days, celebrating our 55 years this season we’ll offer The $100 Daily. The fine print goes like this: 1. This deal applies to day trips between July 8 and August 31, 2012. 2. You must have at least four passengers in your party, so bring your friends along for the fun! 3. You must make your reservation after February 1, 2012 and before May 1st, 2012. (That means paying a deposit of ⅓ of your total trip, with the remaining balance due 30 days prior.) 4. We’ll cover your $6 BLM fee inclusive in the $100, which means that our inflation equivalent of the $12.50, plus a recreational use fee that would have been unheard of in 1957 works out just right. Our great thanks for all of those years of passengers ready to explore, and happy boating! ItineraryWe depart from Bluff at 8 a.m., via Wild Rivers vans, to the Sand Island launch ramp 4 miles west of Bluff. At the river, after safely packing away your cameras and sunscreen in dry bags, and a brief orientation on river safety, we're off!For the first few miles, the surrounding country is open. The river carries us past orange and black-streaked sandstone outcroppings. This was the home of the Anasazi, the ancient desert farming culture who lived in this area eight to twenty centuries ago. Evidence of their time here is all around us in the remains of their dwellings and the art they carved in the smooth sandstone walls rising around us. The Butler Wash petroglyph panel is our first stop. Only a few feet from the river's edge, this broad panel is filled with mysterious images pecked by the early Anasazi, the Basketmakers some 1500 years ago. Journeying a little further down river, we land again and make a quarter mile hike to "River House," a Pueblo III style cliff dwelling. This structure has a small round kiva and several adjoining rooms tucked into a rock alcove. It is estimated to be about 800 years old. After we finish exploring this site we continue down the river and find a shady spot to eat our lunch, under the canopy of a cottonwood. When our journey continues, the rock formations begin to take prominence as the river enters the Monument Upwarp, a giant wrinkle in the skin of the earth. Then we pass through the Comb Ridge Monocline and the Lime Ridge Anticline. The river here narrows and cuts a deep canyon into 300 million year old Pennsylvanian limestone, and the current quickens as small rapids and riffles rock the boat. Near "8-Foot Rapid," the undulating pattern in the rock reveals the presence of "bioherms," porous mounds in an ancient shallow sea that act as reservoir rock, "capturing" oil which is found in abundance in this area. If we're lucky, we may get a glimpse of several Desert Bighorn Sheep as they graze above us on narrow rock shelves or a beaver napping under a ledge. Mid-afternoon, we stop to look for fossils in the limestone. As we near the end of our trip the river leaves the canyon and we pass beneath the balanced slab of "Mexican Hat" rock. Our next landing ends our river trip where Wild Rivers vans are waiting to transport us back to Bluff offering further opportunities to view the dramatic red rock of the Valley of the Gods and a very different passage through Comb ridge than our river trip allowed. We arrive back in Bluff around 5 p.m. and our adventure has come to a finish. Note: During higher flows we will row the rafts, while at lower flows we will use small motors, enabling us to cover the same section of river throughout the season. Suggested ReadingHUMAN PREHISTORYLegacy On Stone: Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners Region Sally Cole Ice Age Peoples Of North America: Environments, Origins, and Adaptations Robson Bonnickson, ed. Humans at the End of the Ice Age : The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition Lawrence Strauss Ed. The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization Brian Fagan Those Who Came Before Robert and Florence Lister Enemy Ancestors Gary Matlock Ancient Ruins of the Southwest David Noble Indian Rock Art of the Southwest Polly Schaafsma Richard Witherill: Anasazi Frank McNitt The Book of Navajo Raymond Locke The Book of Hopi Frank Waters Collapse Jared Diamond HISTORY Traders of the Navajo Frances Gillmore and Louise Wetherill Explorations of the Colorado River and its Canyons John Wesley Powell Hole in the Rock Expedition David Miller San Juan County, Utah Allan Kent Powel Anchored Lariats on the San Juan Frontier Norma Perkins Young Encounters With the Archdruid John McPhee River Runners of the Grand Canyon David Lavender Crossing the Next Meridian Charles Wilkinson Fire on the Plateau Charles Wilkinson Mormon Country Wallace Stegner The Gathering of Zion Wallace Stegner Conversations on History and Literature Wallace Stegner Reopening the Western Frontier People's History of Wilderness Water in the West High Country News Books (various authors and editors, see: www.hcn.org) Reclaiming the Native Home of Hope Robert Keiter New Genesis : M ormon Reader on Land and Community Terry Tempest Williams, Ed. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water Mark Reisner Glen Canyon Before Lake Powell Eleanor Inskip GEOLOGY The Colorado Plateau Don Baars Geology of the Canyons of the San Juan Don Baars San Juan Canyons (River Guide) Don Baars and Gene Stevenson Life in Stone: Fossils of the Colorado Plateau Christa Saddler NATURAL HISTORY The Ice-Age History of Southwestern National Parks Scott A. Elias Packrat middens: The last 40,000 years of biotic change Julio Betancourt & Tom Van Devender A Naturalist's Guide to Canyon Country David Williams Eating Stone Ellen Meloy Wind in the Rock Ann Zwinger Run River Run Ann Zwinger Desert Plants of Utah Berniece A. Andersen Grasses of the Southwestern United States Frank W. Gould Sibley Field Guide to North American Birds David Allan Sibley Singing Stone Thomas Lowe Fleischner A Field Guide to Mammals A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians A First Guide to Insects of North America A First Guide to Butterflies and Moths These are all Peterson Guide Books OTHER FICTION AND NON-FICTION Desert Solitaire Abbey The Monkey Wrench Gang Abbey The Sound of Mountain Water Wallace Stegner A Thief of Time Tony Hillerman Listening Woman Tony Hillerman The Dark Wind Tony Hillerman Coyote Waits Tony Hillerman Coyote's Canyon Terry Tempest Williams Pieces of White Shell Terry Tempest Williams Red Terry Tempest Williams Refuge Terry Tempest Williams Ceremony Leslie Mormon Silko Waterlines Ann Weiler Walka TestimonialsSubmit a Testimonial »No testimonials have been submitted for this trip yet. Click here to submit a testimonial. |
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