White Water Rafting

Okay. After taking more than a month off from blogging, I'm back with a splash. Here are some more pictures from our summer vacation to Oregon. Kyle's dad took us white water rafting in Idaho on the Payette River. I just realized that some of these pictures are out of order but seeing as its almost 10:oo at night and I am tired, I am not going to fix it. I could leave it for tomorrow when I will be more inclined to do a better job but I've already come this far. So here you go.
Our river guide was a man named Jordan. He was great fun. Interestingly enough, he was able to engage Sam in most of the conversation. Sam, who doesn't really speak to strangers, was so talkative with Jordan. It was fun to listen to and see him lose some of his inhibitions for a while. Every now and then we run into a person who, for some unknown reason, can engage Sam so easily and effortlessly.
This is us listening to instructions on how to get into the raft and how to secure ourselves once we got in. I did not take my camera into the raft. I most definately would have lost it one way or another. Once into the boat, we had calm water to start with so we practiced the different directions Jordan would give us. Both Kyle and I have been white water rafting before so we we somewhat familiar with it. The kids did so well. At first, I didn't want to go on any rapids that were above a level 2 because I was a worried mother. Come to find out the run of the river we were going to be on had four level 3 rapids.

Out of order picture but don't they look ready to go? They were very excited but nervous at the same time.

This is Kyle and his dad is in the background. He was pretty good about ducking out of the picture. He couldn't get away from the riverside camera, however. Check out how much fun he was having once we get to the rapids.

Amazon River Queen.

Sam kind of looks like he has doubts about our guide.

Jacob isn't going to let anything get in the way of his white water adventure.

Amazon River Princess. Peace, y'all.

Getting ready to step into the boat.

One of the rapids we went through was called "The Mixmaster". It had a big rock on the side of the rapid that Jordan made sure we hit just right to turn us around and make us enter the rapid backwards and keep turning until we got out. We didn't even have to do any paddling to get out of it. An easy rapid to start with. Another not so easy rapid that we encountered was called "Mike's Hole" because of the big hole in the middle of the rapid that we had to avoid. We had to paddle in this rapid but got out very smoothly. Another rapid had three names. One was Chief Parrish, named for somewhere close by that stretch of river. Another name for it was Barking Dog because on one trip, Jordan and his group came around the bend and there was a dog on the shore barking at them. The last name was "Naked Boy" named for a boy on another of Jordan's trips who fell out of the raft in this rapid and as he was being pulled back into the boat, the water refused to give up the boy's pants. Jordan said we could name the rapid anything we wanted so I called it Chief Barking Naked. I can't remember any other names of rapids. Here are the pictures from one of the rapids we went through. It was a great one. By this time, Sam and Analee had decided they didn't want to sit on the side of the raft and were parked in the bottom of the raft in the back by Jordan. You can't see them very well. Analee has quite paddling but Sam is still following directions even if he can't get his paddle into the water and is only scooping air.

Here we are making our approach. The pictures tell the story.

Analee was crying a bit through this rapid. I didn't realize how scared she was. This kind of adventure is not really her cup o' tea. Poor thing but we made it through just fine. And felt on top of the world afterwards. It was great.

We only paid for five pictures but when we got home to Kyle's parents house and looked at the CD on the computer, we found they had given us all 16 pictures taken. Very nice of them. It was a fun time and the scenery was gorgeous.