White Water Rafting

Wednesday morning, once again, we got up at 5:30 am so we could be at Tag-A-Long by 7. We were going White Water Rafting in Westwater Canyon. Since it rained the day before the temperature had dropped significantly.  It was windy and the high for the day was about 50 degrees. Not the best day to be on a river.

The first half of the trip wasn't too bad. There weren't any rapids and with Ryan next to me blocking the wind I wasn't too cold.  Our tour guides strapped the three rafts together and ran a little motor to move us down the river faster.  We were fine with that.  The canyons we went through were spectacular.  Unfortunately we were so busy looking around we forgot to get pictures.  There were steep granite walls, bald eagles, and a slow moving, dark, colorado river.  It was so cool.

The guy on the left was our tour guide, Ben, and the guy on the right was the main tour guide.  I can't remember his name because I kept calling him Captain Jack Sparrow.  He growled and mumbled just like the actor and talked with a loud, enthusiastic voice.  He cracked me up, although, I don't think it was intentional.

The guy on the left here is Kim Groneman.  It's his job to plan these trips every year.  He's a real outdoors man and loves Southern Utah so he plans a lot of trips here.

That's it for my pictures.  We stopped for lunch (Mexi Cones again, not so great the second day) and put on our wetsuits and every warm piece of clothing we had.  We then went in our individual rafts down 14 class 3 and class 4 rapids for the next hour or so.  Ryan was terrified.  I've never seen him so pale.  We sat in the back of the boat because our guide said it wouldn't be so bad from there but there was one set of falls we went over that launched us both.  I thought Ryan was going to end up in the river but at the last second we both fell into the bottom of the raft.  We were then swallowed by a huge wave of water and totally drenched.  The winds picked up, the rains came, and by the time we got back to the bus my lips were blue and I was shivering uncontrollably.  It was pretty fun, though.  Our guide was really competent and I was never really worried about falling out of the boat.  Not for myself at least.

That night, after warming up in a very long, hot shower, we went out to dinner at a Lodge just outside Moab. Again I went most of the day without cell phone reception and knew the kids were babysitting while Sheri went to Salt Lake.  I was feeling very anxious and finally asked the receptionist at the Lodge if I could use the phone.  It turned out the kids had had a rough night trying to get Evelyn in bed and take care of everything.  On top of that someone stole Austin's new scooter when Dallin rode it to church for his Young Men's activity.  Dallin was heartbroken.  I told him it was fine and that he and Cameron were doing a great job and I was really proud of them.  I told him not to worry about the scooter, that we would get Austin a new one.  I felt like maybe I should go home so the kids wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore.  Ryan told me to wait and decide in the morning.