The excellent weather continued today; we sure have been blessed on this trip.

We left our Surprise Valley camp around 7:40 and were sent on our way by a few turkey vultures that were riding the thermals directly over our camp. At first I thought they were California condors but after checking the detail on the photos I don't think so. Whatever they were it was a great start to the morning to watch them soaring overhead like that.

We made good time going across Surprise Valley to the Redwall break and we arrived at the lower end of that around 8:45 or so. We took a few short breaks wherever we could find shade on the way up and arrived at the top around 10:10.

We had a longer rest at the top and then continued on to our last camp on the Esplanade, near our cache site. We arrived there around 12:20, found a nice spot to camp next to some cliffs, and then went to retrieve our food and water caches. Luckily nothing had been tampered with. John, Janice and I had a nice relaxing lunch while waiting for Mary and Robert to show up.

After lunch John got out his book and found a nice spot to do some reading in. Janice and I went in search of some pot holes in the drainage to the north of our camp that were supposed to still have a large amount of rain water in them. After a little scouting along the rim I managed to find a few and Janice and I managed to find a break in the cliff and work our way down to them. The largest one, right above a high pour-off, was about 8' long, 4' wide and appeared to be a little more than a foot deep at the deepest point. We didn't take any water though as we really didn't need any. Janice was fascinated by all of the tadpoles in some of them and did take some photos.

Later in the day Mary and Robert went down there to check out the potholes and also found a western diamondback rattlesnake curled up between the lower cliff ledges. After dinner I went down to see if it was still there and to get some photos if it was. Janice wasn't going to go but after I had been gone for a while she changed her mind and came down as well. John also came down and then went to get his filter so he could grab an extra quart of water from one of the upper potholes.

We had a nice dinner tonight of ham, vegetables and garlic mashed potatoes---our last supper in the Canyon. :(