The Grand Canyon River Trip Simulator is a model written in Python Mesa that shows combinations of private and commercial river trips traveling on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Each trip is randomly assigned a pre-planned set of campsites that fits its size and trip length. As trips travel through the Canyon the names of the camps that they stay at each night is displayed. If a trip gets to a campsite and it is already taken then in the console it shows as it tries to find the next campsite that is empty. Scrolling to the bottom of the screen shows the number of contacts between trips. The contacts are only those were a group passes another group once during a day; it does not consider contacts where a group passes another group and then the second group passes the first group before their camps at the end of the day. Nor does it consider several groups at the same attraction. So while the number of contacts surely understates the actual contacts it helps to show relative numbers of contacts for different parameters selected when running the model.
An option is provided to allow use of camps adjacent to Hualapai lands. This allows the simulator to show how reducing the number of camps along a stretch of the river impacts groups trying to find a campsite and the change in the number of contacts. The parameters for the simulator are the number of private and commercial trips launching each day and the private and commercial trip lengths. This makes it possible to see differences for different mixtures of trip types and lengths on contacts and crowding in the Canyon. There also is a parameter for the maximum number of days for the simulation. The river is empty when the simulation begins so it takes some time for the groups to populate the Canyon.