Jackson {part 2}

If you have never rafted the snake river, you are missing out on one hell of a time! I can honestly say that it is one of the most fun things I have ever done. In the seven days we were there, Brett and I rode the river about thirteen times. Each run down the river takes about two hours, so we were on the river for between four and six hours every day. That might sound boring, doing the same stretch of river two or three times a day, but I assure you it was not. The levels of the river change throughout the day, so that makes the rapids change. Each time you go it is completely different than the last. The sun was beating down and reflecting off the water like you wouldn't believe. That, my friends, is a serious sun burn risk. Lucky for us we had SPF 85 on our side.

Here are a video and some pictures to give you an idea of why your life is not yet complete if you have never rafted the mighty snake:

The thing that I find funny is that cold water usually bothers me, but while we were on the raft I never had a problem with it. I'm not just talking chilly, I'm talking like so cold that while you are sitting on the edge of the raft paddling and your foot is submerged in the water it goes almost completely numb. It was cold. But for some reason I just loved it. It could've been that the sun was SO hot or that we were having so much fun on the rapids that I forgot to think about how cold it was. I don't know, but I loved it.

At first I was afraid to be a paddler, I think that I was more afraid of being thrown out of the raft, but once I took a turn paddling I realized that it made the ride more exciting. There were only two runs the whole time that I didn't paddle at least half of the way. I was only thrown out of the raft one time, and that was interesting. We were heading around this bend in the river, and the current just started throwing us into the wall. I was paddling, but I was on the opposite side of the raft from the wall we were going to hit. Right at the last second before we were going to hit it, everyone on that side of the raft jumped over to my side, and I got knocked out by Chaz's dad. Once I got over the initial shock of the cold, I realized that it wasn't so bad after all, and it didn't scare me anymore, in fact I was secretly hoping it would happen again. Brett got thrown out of the boat a lot more than I did, but it's because he is a lot more fearless than me. He was going over a lot of the rapids without even holding onto the ropes. He's brave, I'm not.

We have already decided that we are going to buy a raft of our own some day and make a tradition out of this. I want to go every year. I have actually already tried to talk Brett into quitting school so that we can just move to Jackson right now and become river guides, but there is the one little issue of those student loans coming due if he quits. That is a bummer, because I would totally do it.

Stay tuned for part 3.....