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Show Byways & Backwaters Me, A Mule And The Grand Canyon sheer drop and I had a blind mule. I wondered if I would lose face backing out now. My daughter rode right behind be-hind the skinner. I guess he picked his traveling companion early in the rigging-checking because I heard him arguing with another skinner about where to place the pretty girls in the string. He won. I guess rank has its privileges. "Has a mule ever gone over?" she asked Bill-the-skinner. "Just once," he answered. Pretty strong safety record, we thought. Then he added, "One time per mule," with a chuckle. Not very reassuring reassur-ing for a 2000 foot descent! And so it went, one-liners all the way down and back, zingers all. I thought the top of the Empire State Building was high until I rode a mule into Grand Canyon without the strong mesh of a chain link fence to separate me from the heights. For the first few switchbacks I forced my .eyes away from the breathtaking view, examining roots, flowers and rocks. Sometimes I even copped out and closed my eyes. After some lengthy internal dialog, dia-log, I put my faith in the good Lord and old Bonnie, and relaxed. relax-ed. Except for the times old Bill would bark, "Don't lean!" And the time he lengthened lengthen-ed my inside stirrup so I wouldn't., Phantasmagoric! That's about the only word in the English language to describe the Grand Canyon. And to see from within, on muleback, is even more so. It's an ever changing pallette, varying with each and every subtle shift of sunlight and shadow. Never static, always in flux, it is indeed a grand canyon. At the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, you can spend a day or a half day in the company of a muleskinner. Half day rides cost $12 and until July 1, only half day rides are available due to trail washout from the severe winter runoff. Whole day trips go for $20 and take you to the Canyon floor from the parking lot of the North Kaibab Trail, 2 miles north of Grand Canyon Lodge where you sign up for the trips. By mid-July, they'll run pack trips into the Canyon for longer periods of time. The stock is outstanding and from an outfit in Beaver, Utah. For a different view, try it. You may like the nineteenth century touring. And give ole Bill my best. by Pat Whittled "I always thought mules were ugly," I chided myself as I looked over the string of beauties beaut-ies about to take us into the depths of Grand Canyon. These well-muscled glamour mounts, every color of the rainbow from pure white through sorrel to dapple grey, belied Francis-the-Talking-Mule who had influenced influenc-ed my lifelong image of these surefooted, sturdy, stubborn critters. One would be my constant con-stant companion for the next several hours. Ugly these weren't were-n't at all! There were about fifty of us riders, mostly tenderfeet who'd never been muleback before -anywhere! A few real dudes wore shorts, hoping to maintain a summer tan. Not me. No way I wanted to spend an afternoon rockin'-and-rollin' down a narrow nar-row cliffside trail without something some-thing between the mule's hide and mine. As we waited to be paired with our mounts, the muleskinners methodically checked chec-ked each animal's rigging, at the same time checking the crowd for pretty faces and divvying them up. For every 10-15 riders, one muleskinner-guide. Or as our guide later told us, our group had two and a half guides since the horse wrangler bringing bring-ing up the rear didn't count. From Las Vegas, he'd most recently been a supermarket bag boy, knowing little about horses and even less about mules. The National Park Service is probably one of the few employ ers in the U.S. that still has "muleskinner" as a job category. cate-gory. Not that the job has gotten any easier over the years. You still have to shoe 'em, feed 'em, round' 'em up and keep 'em paired if they're mated. The type of human who rides herd over them mules, with a few tenderfeet thrown in just for interest, probably hasn't changed much in a hundred years. "D'ya ride?" the skinner asked ask-ed my husband who lazed back against a parked pickup watching watch-ing the greener riders approach their mules cautiously. "Some," he replied with a small smile. A pause while the guide measured him from the top of his Bailey straw along his faded boot-cut Levis to the tips of his rough-outs. rough-outs. In one sweep of an eye, he was ranked a ride. "Give ya Blue Nun. He's an O.K. mule. Just got more dislikes than likes." Not very reassuring for a 2000 foot descent. And, besides, he asked the wrong member of our family about their riding skill. In five minutes the whole group was mounted and ready to go. I got the white one I'd wanted from the start, a milky beauty named Bonnie who didn't much like whatever I did with the reins. Not very reassuring for a 2000 foot descent. "Why won't this mule do what I say with the reins?" I asked as I nervously approached the first bend in the trail. "Oh, she's blind, but don't worry a bit. She's " made the trip a few times." Two thousand feet off a |