I was up around 6:30 this morning. I was awake about 5:30 or so but it is still chilly here and I stayed in the sleeping bag for as long as I could. The people who had the good campsite headed out early this morning and as soon as they did we took over that site and moved all of our stuff over here. It is much roomier and we have more room to spread out.

Pam wanted to sleep in this morning but luckily Alysia was up and heated some water for me for coffee. My coffee was actually a combination of coffee and chocolate flavored creamer and this morning I decided to add a little of the Captain Morgan spiced rum to it to spice it up a little. Yummy. Well, it was a lay over day.

After breakfast Max, John and I went for a little day hike up to the dry lake bed above Deer Creek on the west side. Pam and Alysia were not interested and said they were going back down to the patio at the upper end of Deer Creek narrows. I had no problem finding the way going up there but I suspect it was a longer and higher hike than Max or John expected. We were back at about the same elevation as the western end of Surprise Valley. We did not hike down to the bed of the lake like I did with Janice last time. We were not up there that long before starting back down. I missed a turn somewhere on the way down and ended up coming out above the Colorado River instead of Deer Creek. It was easy enough to hike back along the top of the narrows to were we could finally descend back to Deer Creek but it just took a little longer than necessary.

Back at Deer Creek we all played around in the waterfalls some more and took more photos. We went back to camp for lunch and after lunch John, Max and I went back down to the Colorado River and Deer Creek Falls. Alysia and Pam went as far as the river overlook with us but were not interested in going down to the falls again.

At the river we met and talked with some people from river trips that were visiting Deer Creek and the falls. I managed to scrounge one beer for the five of us and was happy to get that. All of the beer was packed away in the bottom of the rafts but one guy had a spare can in a storage box on the side. He gave me a hard time and wanted to screw around with me for a little while but he finally gave it to me. Nice guy actually. Thank you, who ever you were.

At one point we had talked about bringing everything we needed for dinner down to the river and actually cooking and eating down there and then waiting for the full moon come up to light the falls. Since the gals didn't want to come down to the river again that idea was blown. Alysia had a problem with one section of the trail through the narrows that was well... very narrow... and she did not want to be doing that in the dark. It was no big deal.

After we all got back to camp we cracked open the bottle of Captain Morgan again and polished that off. We put the one beer we had into the creek for a while to chill it and once that was cold we polished it off as well.

We had a nice relaxing dinner at camp and after dinner Max, John, Alysia and I stayed up to wait for the full moon to come up over the cliffs. Last night it came up over the cliffs a little after 7:30 but tonight it wasn't until after 8:30. We did not stay up much longer after that. I thought briefly about going back down to the river to see what Deer Creek Falls looked like under moonlight but it seems a little far away and probably would have taken me a couple/few hours to get down there, take some photos and then come back. We want to get an early start in the morning and be back in Surprise Valley before the sun hits us so it makes more sense to just go to bed and try to sleep.