Time on the River

I love river rafting. I think I could happily go once a month. Maybe more. Definitely more if somebody was going to cook and do all of the hard work. I love the water (fresh water, I'm not a huge salt water fan), wilderness, backpacking, and camping, and river rafting combines all of those things in this amazing melange of adventure and slow, slow time.

And I am blessed to be surrounded by people who embrace the dirt and the wildness of it all and are willing to sleep under the stars and poop in buckets and bathe in the river and play endless rounds of cribbage under a slowly setting sun. I am grateful that this family is happy on a raft. They are just amazing people to be with out in nature, and they just keep getting better and better at this wilderness thing!

But enough overly sentimental reflections of a proud mom and wife - let's talk about this trip. 

Last week we rafted the Yampa River. The Yampa is the last free-flowing (undammed) tributary of the Colorado River, which is kind of mind-blowing. Every other tributary that is big enough to raft has a dam regulating its flow. Let that sink in. Boy oh boy do we humans love to control our "natural resources."

Being a wild river, the flow is just the natural flow, and one can only run the Yampa in the early summer as the Colorado snows melt and fill the river. It also means that the water level fluctuates dramatically day-by-day with weather and temperature many miles away. 

The Yampa flows into the Green in Dinosaur National Monument. We rafted 72 miles over 5 days through everything from slack water to Class IV rapids. Being people who enjoy letting someone else do the cooking and all of the both hard and skilled work, we booked through Adrift Dinosaur, a great group of folks we've rafted with before. 

One of the coolest things about this trip is that in addition to the oar boats, we also got to bring some small craft: inflatable kayaks and a paddleboard. These were a true highlight of the trip, especially for the teens (and Steve) who loved mastering the rapids under their own power. And, yes, we did have one very scary moment when our stand-up paddleboarder got dunked in a big rapid and pinned for a moment against a mean ol' rock. But we had good fortune, good helmets, and good PFDs and he emerged shaken and cold and tired from the ordeal but a-ok. So, maybe the hard Class IIIs are a little much for this group on stand-up paddleboards... lesson learned. I guess we'll just need more practice.

The trip just felt like magical moment after magical moment, so it feels impossible to call out the highlights, but here's an attempt:

• 
  Annie! This is now the third trip where we've had the pleasure of paddling with Annie, our very favorite guide. The first time was luck, the second was serendipity, and the third is request :) Wilderness friends are the very best kinds of friends.
  
• 
  Butt Dam Falls. Aptly named and well worth the 5 mile hike. A few of you sit in the falls' channel while another reclines beneath. The three lift up their butts. The fourth is doused. Repeat.
  
• 
  Cowboy Camping. The weather was amazing for our trip, the bugs were (mostly) managable, and we were able to "cowboy camp" out under the stars almost every night. Perfect.
  
• 
  Tyler Grant. An unexpected delight was having an amazing musician, Tyler Grant, on the trip as a guide. By day, he rows and leads hikes, and by night he transforms into the most delightful fireside dance and singalong leader and solo musician. It makes me tempted to sign up for one of Adrift's RiverWonderGrass rafting outings... so tempting... Go follow that guy on Spotify, he's great.
  
• 
  All the Other Guides. And, let's face it, the other three guides, Will, Pepper Jack, and Buckley were each such fun, entertaining, generous, skilled, hardworking, kind folks. Seriously, the Adrift staff are amazing.
  
• 
  Bighorn Sheep. Every day we got to share the river with a flock or two of bighorn sheep! It never got old.
  
• 
  Pelicans and Bald Eagles. We also saw at least one bald eagle every day and a whole flock of pelicans!
  
• 
  Stars. Good Lord, the stars at night. It was just amazing.
  
• 
  Costume (and Steak) Night. Our final night's meal attire and shenanigans were eclipsed only by its deliciousness. I promise they were having fun in this photo, they just didn't want to admit it. That or they were impatient waiting for the steak.
  

 

I don't really know how to describe the magic of River Time. It's slow and delightful and beautiful. It's connected and disconnected all at once. And I just can't get enough of it. Now that I've come home and gotten my shower and washed some laundry, I'm pretty sure it's time to go back out on the river...