Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Whitewater Rafting on Memorial Day Weekend

Back in January when we did the float trip on the Skagit River our guide was telling us about whitewater rafting on the Wenatchee River.  My wild child of a mother was all gung ho and ready to take on the rapids.  Well, as luck would have it about a month ago we got the Groupon deal of the day and it was for Orion Whitewater Rafting tours.  So not only did we get to go whitewater rafting, we got it for half price!! 

We made our reservations for the Saturday over Memorial Day weekend because that's the earliest you can do it.  Well let me tell you, the river was WILD!  Since it's so early in the season and there was still snow melting in the mountains there were crazy rapids!  I was pretty freaked out when we hit our first rapids, but by the end I was sad to be done.  Here are pictures of the fun day:

We met up in Cashmere which is 15 miles east of Leavenworth.  We were an hour and a half early, so we had time to walk around town
Getting ready to go with our wetsuits on!  I still don't know how to flip the picture so flip your head!
The bus drove us back up to Leavenworth where it dropped us off
We went with a couple of my mom's crew buddies, Larry and Sam.  They are so fun.  Sam is so freaking hardcore.  She just got back from New Zealand a few weeks ago where she went bungee jumping.  She's always doing adventurous things and has been whitewater rafting a ton.  Oh yeah, and she's 70.
Waiting to set off!
I said if Larry had been in the middle, it would have been a Sam-wich :)  My mom rolled her eyes at my cheesy sense of humor
I couldn't really take very many pictures on the river since it got crazy, but I took them when I could!
About halfway through we had to get off and take our rafts around a dam.  Here's my cute momma waiting to get back in the river!
People would stand on the side of the river where the crazy rapid parts were and take pictures.  Then they put a thing on your windshield that said go to this website to get your pictures.  It was seriously like paparazzi.  So I went and of course you can't copy the pictures to your computer.  But no one can stop me from taking pictures of the pictures :)  So here are some of the pictures they got of our raft (crappy quality of course since it's a pic of a pic!). I'm on the right side behind Larry.  You can see his hat and sunglasses and I'm right behind that.  My mom is the second one on the left side.
Ok, you can't even see Larry in this one because there's a giant wave going over him.  So I'm the first person on the right side
I'm the only one in the raft not wearing the yellow jacket (besides our guide in the back)
I liked this one because you really can't even see our raft in the picture :)
We are officially hooked on whitewater rafting and are planning on going in September to do the Tieton River, which is supposed to be the fastest river in Washington to go whitewater rafting on.  I can't wait!

Oh, and I fell in the freezing cold snow melt river when we were taking the raft out to walk around the dam.  Well Sunday I woke up and felt sick.  Right away Brent blamed the river.  I wasn't convinced it was from that (or I didn't want to believe it :)) and on Monday when I woke up I couldn't swallow at all so I went to the doctor.  Turns out I have strep.  So HA to my cute hubby who tried to blame it on the cold water :)  They put me on antibiotics and steroids to help and I feel a million times better today.  Now Brent just has to deal with my roid rage.

1 comment:

Karin Stephens said...

You look like your boat is completely sunk in the water. So fun!