At around 9:00 the sun finally cleared the canyon walls and it started to warm up real fast. My headache was gone and I decided to take off upstream and see what I could find. I first changed back into shorts and got rid of the sweatshirt. The directions to Mystic Falls were to follow the creek upstream until it forked and then take the left fork. When it forks again you're supposed to take the right fork.

I finally left camp at around 9:30. There was plenty of air traffic in the Canyon and I was hoping that it would not be continuing all day. The day before had been rather quiet as far as the nuisance machines go. It was still a very nice morning for a walk. There were many pools along the creek and lots of stuff living in them: small fish, tadpoles, water spiders, all kinds of algae... I was curious about the fish and wondered if they could be baby trout. Some of these pools had to be anywhere from 3 to 6 miles from the river and it seemed amazing that the trout would be coming this far upstream to spawn. I also knew that Nankoweap delta was famous as a trout fishery so this seemed likely though.

Mount Hayden was looming off in the west and seemed to be calling to me. It was strange to be seeing from below after all the time I had spent looking at it over the years from Point Imperial. Not far above the camping area I passed what I thought might have been the first fork in the creek and kept to the left. There did not appear to be any water coming down the right fork which was good, I guess. I followed the creek until around noon when the water disappeared. I was hoping that it was just flowing underground and was happy to see it reappear further up in the bed. The pools beyond this point still had fish in them and I found that amazing as they obviously weren't going anywhere without a clear run to the river. The creek continued to disappear and reappear a couple more times and was really starting to loose volume being just a trickle in places. When I finally came to the next fork in the creek bed, the right bed, the one I was supposed to follow was bone dry and I was doubtful of finding a waterfall up that way. There was still a small amount of water flowing down from the left fork but that was not the way I was supposed to go. At that point it was around noon and I figured I had done enough for the day and started back to camp.

I broke for lunch at around 1 pm, next to the creek and beneath the shade of a very large and probably very old cottonwood. After lunch I took out my book for a while and just relaxed in the shade. It was very nice and occasionally a cool breeze would blow down from the rim. At around 2 pm I started back to camp and arrived there around 3:30. I didn't do very much that afternoon and just lounged around camp, enjoyed the scenery and read some more. This was probably the most relaxing trip I had ever done in the Canyon but I was trying to give my feet a break before the hike out.

I was pretty sure that I would be heading out the next day, though I wasn't sure it I would be going all the way back to the rim or camping somewhere along the way. The campsites at Tilted Mesa were very nice but they were still a long way from the rim. I was sort of thinking about that one site near Marion Point which would make for an easy last day. Dinner than night consisted of a Lipton Noodles and Sauce dinner, Parmesan flavor. It was quite tasty, though maybe a little heavy on the garlic, but much better than the normal freeze-dried dinners.