So, you checked out Arizona River Runners website and now you're undecided about which trip to choose. 3 days, 8 days. What's the difference?
Right up front, let me make it quite clear that the 3-day trip does NOT go where the longer trips go just floating really fast. No!
The longer river trips typically start at Lee's Ferry and travel downstream 187 miles to Whitmore Wash where a helicopter awaits those people for a breathtaking flight out of the Grand Canyon. This is where the 3-day people enter the river. So, after having spent a day at the Bar 10 Ranch along the Arizona Strip, the 3-day people swap seats with those leaving the river, on both the helicopter and the raft, as their river time starts at Whitmore Wash and continues downstream for more fun and fabulous scenery. The river is emerging out of the depths of the Grand Canyon. The corridor is widening and the rapids are less extreme. There is still grandeur to behold and rapids to ride but it is not the closeness of the Inner Gorge or the ebony Vishnu Schist that corrals the torrential waters upstream.
There are millions of awesome things to see in the Grand Canyon. You could spend a lifetime and never explore everything. But, in 25 words or less...the longer your raft trip is, the more time you have to explore off-river sites. There are Indians ruins, petroglyphs, fossils, waterfalls, grottos, pioneer homes, side creeks running turquoise blue, and places of immense serenity beckoning to your senses.
The longer you spend in the Grand Canyon the more you will revel in the vastness of this place. Time in the Grand Canyon is time well spent.
