Day on the River

Today we went on our annual river rafting excursion, maybe our very favorite summer event. We set out on an afternoon launch, and it was a perfectly hot and sunny day. It's always a lot harder to row than we remember, but we managed to make our way. Lucia and Greta love to get out of the raft and swim along behind, though this makes moving forward difficult, since they're both basically serving as anchors.

We stopped at a rocky sandbar along the way to swim, floating down the river with the current and then wading back to our raft. It's very pleasant to swim in the shallow part of the river. The water is clear and cool, there are no sharks or snapping turtles, and it's just very peaceful to be alone on the river. It's less pleasant to swim in deeper parts of the river, which we discovered when we stopped further along, and Greta was casually floating when a giant fish basically swam right by her neck and she jumped up screaming "SHARK!" Ha ha ha. It was obviously not a shark, but it was startling, yet more WILDLIFE. The ankle- or knee-deep, pebbly areas are the way to go.

It took us a solid two hours to make our way to the put-out. The water level was low, so we got beached a few times and had to get out and pull our raft along. After we returned all our equipment, we had dinner at the Harpoon Brewery--a perfect end to the day. It always feels like we accomplished something, making this river trip happen. It was a good day.