Can the Selfie Generation Unplug and Get Into Parks?

At Lees Ferry, Arizona, the launch point for a raft trip down the basement of the continent, not a disheartening word is heard from those about to start a four-day ride through the Grand Canyon. We’ll see fossil remains from a time when the rock above us was an ocean floor, we’re told.

We’ll bounce through rapids shaped by the gravitational tug of the Colorado River at its most muscular. We’ll catch glimpses of bighorn sheep climbing canyon walls and stick our heads under little waterfalls squeezed out of those same walls, rising a mile above the river. At night we’ll sleep on beaches of sugar sand and stare through a sliver of sky at the immensity of the universe. No, sir, not a disheartening word.

“Damn! No service.”