Warning: if you're reading this log and you want to some day play in the published adventure "Canyon O' Doom", don't. You'll be learning how to go through the adventure from a group that... well, let's just say they're a bad example.

The ambush of the Guardian Angels goes pretty well. While Tobey and Edgar dig in behind some tombstones across the street, Robert, Bart, and Dr. Vorpwhistle hide under the tarps on the wagons. Cady (as Edgar) and Sophie go for an evening stroll and inspect said wagons, loitering for a while. The Angels can't resist, and attack with clubs (presumably to keep the noise down).

Cady and Sophie go back to back, and while Cady gets whacked a good one with a club Sophie mostly keeps her attackers off with her bowie knives. Meanwhile, the ambush opens up. Robert whips his Stuart this way and that, killing two by the wagons and another later as he flees. Dr. Vorpwhistle demonstrates the power of electricity by basically carbonizing one hapless attacker with his EKG. Bart lays down gatling fire on a couple of Angels as well, and wounds them.

A moment later, as the Angels are just realizing that they're in real trouble and starting to go for their guns, Tobey and Edgar open up, mowing down escaping angels. Cady starts using her soul blasts as well.

And suddenly, the fight is over. There are few survivors, and only one actually conscious. Robert and Bart spirit him away before the sheriff arrives. When he does, Cady (still as Edgar) lays on about how they were attacked by these men, luckily they had left minions guarding the wagons and showed them what was what. Finding Church of Lost Angels literature on a few of them, the sheriff is inclined to believe Cady. Dr. Haskins. Whoever.

Meanwhile, Bart and Robert have taken their captive to the walk at the actual cliff, and are trying to impress him with the drop and make him talk. He refuses to tell them anything, and then Robert notices a dark shape swooping at them. He yells "drop!" and Bart drops while Robert raises his rifle and then thinks better of it and drops as well. The winged creature hits the Guardian Angel and flings him out into the canyon, making no attempt to rescue him. Bart and Robert decide to flee rather than see if it will come back.

The next day the expedition actually starts - the whole day is taken ferrying things down into the canyon on the lifts and moving them to the boats. The group learns a bit about river travel from the Edmunds brothers, and about the canyon rattlesnakes. They also learn that it's incredibly hot on the floor of the canyons. The night passes uneventfully, and the first day of travel is also calm.

Making camp near the junction of the Colorado and Little Colorado, Cady's manitous inform her that there is something interesting up under a ledge. She gets somewhat interested, but what really gets people worked up is that Dr. Haskins remembers a Hopi legend about how everything in the world came into it at this very place. Soon there's nothing for it but a scramble up the slope in the growing dark. Sophie and Tobey try to be voices of reason, but fail.

By lamplight, Dr. Vorpwhistle finds a strange petroglyph, whose basic design is a circle, people sacrificing a deer, and a spiral. They decide this is how to open the whatever it is, but don't have any convenient animals, so they go back to sleep.

In the morning, Summer Rains has summoned a big-horn sheep, and the posse takes it (again, Tobey and Sophie wondering why they're doing this) and goes up to the ledge again to perform a sacrifice. When they do so, the shadows under the ledge deepen to an inky blackness. Dr. Vorpwhistle goes in with a rope tied around him.

He finds himself passing through swirling mists, and then in dim light by a huge buttress. Looking around, he realizes that he's actually between the roots of a huge tree. Coming over the top of the wall / root next to him is what appears to be a rotting lizard - only it's huge. He decides as it eyes him that it would be best to leave, and goes back along the rope.

As Dr. Vorpwhistle reemerges, the bellowing of the lizard gets louder. The posse worries that it may emerge after him, and decides (on Dr. Haskins's advice) to throw the sheep into the portal. This does in fact close it without first disgorging a lizard-thing. Robert and Summer Rains decide that this is a portal to the Hunting Grounds, and therefore very dangerous. It's clearly not the point of the present expedition, so it's decided that they will have to come back later.

After this delay they continue down the river, stopping to camp just before Unkar rapids, near where earlier Powell expeditions found large amounts of Anasasi artifacts. Everyone except Summer Rains and Bart travel up Unkar creek to go poke at pots, and passes the later afternoon that way.

As they're thinking about returning, they see a group of men with guns coming towards them from upstream. Robert also spots at least twenty men with rifles in the rocks around them - the posse is well and truly surrounded.

"So... what brings you to the humble estate of Charles Ryan?"

Thanks to Jan Maessen and Andrea Humez for guest-starring as Edgar and Sophie.