A few weeks ago, my friend Kellie from Utah sent out a group invite about a river rafting trip she was putting together. I don't know if she invited me just to invite me because she seemed pretty shocked when I said that I would love to drive up there and go with them. It sounded like a fun, new adventure that I have never tried before and I haven't seen my Utah friends for a few months so it seemed like good timing for a trip up north.
On Wednesday afternoon I headed up to LV for the night just to split the trip up a little, and then on Thursday I completed my drive just in time for dinner! So a group of us headed over to one of our favorites, Brick Oven! It was delicious as always and we had lots of time for some girl chat. A few of our other "couple" friends could not come so Mike ended up being the only guy there, but he was a good sport about it and didn't complain too much about a three hour dinner with the girls (at least not to us anyway!)
On Friday about noon we met up at BYU Outdoors Unlimited, they were the ones putting on this trip. They loaded our total group of about twenty people into two huge vans and we headed down to Green River which was approximately three hours away. Upon arrival, we set up our little camp and then went swimming in the river because it was so freakishly hot down there. I thought swimming in the water meant "playing around in the river" but that was indeed not it. Where we were camping on the river was some pretty decent little rapids (as far as swimming is concerned) so we did almost a little obstacle type course thing where we jumped in and paddled as quickly as our little arms would take up and the water kind of guided us to a rock. We climbed the rock then jumped off to a different rock which required even harder paddling to get there and a little more strength to actually climb up onto the rock. After that we jumped off rock number two and swam into the current which took us a ways down stream before we once again had to paddle and swim swim swim once again in order to break the current and get back to the shore. The first time through was a little scary, but after that we really got the hang of it and the water felt so great considering how hot it was outside.
That night the guides cooked us a yummy dinner and dessert and we all just kind of sat around getting eaten by bugs. The different groups of people in the group didn't really mingle too much, so our little group of six attempted to play some cards and just kind of chatted and ate until we got fed up of the bugs and the heat and just decided to go to bed. The next morning after a yummy breakfast, we packed the whole site back up and boarded the vans to go further up the river to begin our rafting trip. Before that, I yanked my group aside and attempted to get a few kodak moments.
The place we camped was called Stone House because, well, that's what was there! So we went and explored the house a little bit. We also got the privilege of having a "toilet" located near our camp site which was exactly just that. Because the toilet has no door, the guides had a very convenient system in place where a life jacket it hung up on the outside and when going into the toilet, you were to grab it, that way, if the jacket was gone, you would know someone was there. Get it?? Afterwards, you hung it back up. Seemed like a decent system except for the minor fact that the toilet was located right on the road of the river and was conveniently labeled for people who might need just that. Therefore after we saw a random man pull over and walk into the toilet not knowing the "life jacket rule" we immediately fell back to the buddy system method instead, which worked wonders because now we didn't have to actually pick up the life jacket which was now probably holding who knows what kinds of bathroom germs!
When we got to the top of the river, we unloaded, then began the task of getting our rafts filled with air. It didn't take too long with lots of helpers though and then it was time to get on the water. They had two big rafts and six small two people rafts called "duckies." our group of six split into three different duckies for the first run down the river. Randi and I literally got a "rocky start" when the current immediately pulled us into a group of rocks where we basically got lodged. Luckily a guide behind us was able to come to our rescue! After that, the trip was good. We would float down the river, when there was a slow current we were able to jump into the water to cool off a bit, or we got in a few pretty good water fights with so many paddles available to everyone. Then we would hit rapidy parts of the river where we would just enjoy the ride. After going down the river for probably an hour, we got out, loaded the boats onto a big trailer, and piled us into a van to take us back to the top to do it all over again. The second time around we experienced the river in the bigger group raft. Not nearly as quick of a ride, but the other people ganged up on our raft (a group of girls- go figure) and ended up working together and flipping our raft! We held on strong for a while, but they just wouldn't let up!
After our few times down the river, we loaded up and headed out back to Provo. We first stopped at a little park to eat some lunch then were back on the road! We hadn't actually scheduled for someone to pick us up at the end of our trip so we ended up walking back to Kellie's house. We probably looked a bit silly carrying tents and sleeping bags down the road, but we did get some pity when a boy invited us into the ice cream shop for some free samples. . . yum!
We got back to Kellie's, took some well needed showers, then Jenae and Mike came back over to go get some ice cream (from the BYU Creamery who has the BEST ice cream- Earnestly Chocolate is the BEST! and some chocolate milk for Shawna. .. yum!)
After that we played one of our favorite games EVER "It Came to Pass." Back in our BYU days we would stay up for hours on end playing this game. . . so it was a fun little reunion playing it again. Below is a picture of Mike and Jenae in one of the famous "Secret Combinations!"
Like all my trips usually are, it was short, it was sweet, but I am glad that I have the summers off that gives me time to try some new things. I had a lot of fun, saw lots of people (both in Utah and LV) and had a good weekend away. Can't wait for what other fun adventures will await this summer!
