Havasupai - Part 2

Havasupai means "people of the blue-green water," and I bet you can figure out why. The village we hiked through in my last post is called Supai, and if you continue down the trail for another 2 miles, you come to the most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen in my life. Not joking. This picture is almost unedited, my friends (just a little contrast and clarity bump). The water is actually that color. I almost died when I saw it.

Havasu Falls.

Here you can see my pack and feel some sort of admiration for me that I WENT BACKPACKING! I've always, always wanted to do it - starting back when I was a teenager and feeling all the jealous feelings that the young men got to do all the fun stuff.

Put me in as a young women leader, 'cause I wanna take those girls BACKPACKING!

Anyway, back to the turquoise water, because that's the real star of this post. 

Like I said, Havasu Falls.

Havasu Falls marks the entrance (kind of) to the campsite. Once you pass the falls, the creek meanders for about a mile with open camping all along the banks. You pick a spot, drop your packs, and make it home.

Exploring the campsite was just as amazing to me as the waterfalls themselves. 

A full mile of this, you guys. A mile.

You just can't even imagine. I tried and tried and tried to get my iPhone to capture the fairy-tale, but it couldn't. You may look at these pictures and think they're beautiful, but I'm telling you... these pictures are a shadow. It felt like I was walking along in a Disney animation and kept expecting fairies and unicorns to come out from around the corners. 

At one point I considered calling out in song to the animals to see if they'd come running, but I didn't want to press my luck.

But if you can just imagine yourself sitting on the bank here... it's not something that just overwhelms your visual senses, though it does do that, but also the sound! Oh, the sound was delicious enough to calm every whit of stress and anxiety and worry. All of those little cascades- like a dream. 

If you walk through the whole campsite, you eventually get to the end of it. And it's quite clear it's the end because the river stops its meandering and tumultuously launches off another cliff to become Mooney Falls. Here's the cliff (notice the tent!):

And here's the water getting ready to launch from a couple of angles:

And then launching, roaring, and falling.

I know it looks the same as Havasu Falls on first glance, but it's not. I'll write more about Mooney Falls next time, because there was a pretty epic hike that took us down there. 

But to wrap up this post, we explored the campsite, ate the most delicious fry bread made by the natives

And swam in the pool at the base of Havasu Falls.

Well, one of us did, anyway.

You might be wondering why there are no pictures of me in the pool? But if you're wondering that, you probably don't know me all that well. I don't do cold water without some intense, intense peer pressure and a promise of warmth afterwards.

They say to come back in the summer. The air is warm and the water is perfect. Deal.

(Although, it was nice to have pictures of the water without it full of people).