Summer Lovin'

I don't know where to begin. We have had a fantastic summer.
Mark and I went kayaking down the Trinity River from Lewiston to Steel Bridge to celebrate both his birthday and my completion of school for the semester. (Poor Chris was still studying away.) We remembered this section of the river as meandering and lazy from a previous trip which we'd taken during late summer. Sure it was now early spring and the flows were much higher but it couldn't make that much difference. . . Could it? It did. The river was crazy! Holy Crow it was full and fast! As soon as we began we were taken on a wild and bumpy ride. (Do not be fooled by these photos from the first half of the trip.) It was so much fun. . . for about half of the way. That is when I flipped in an eddy as wide as the river. After we righted the boat, settled in, and continued paddling, the river got even faster with long, long white water sections and unbelievable eddies. I'm pretty sure that it was about then that we realized we might be in just a tad bit over our heads. In fact, we didn't think it--we knew it. Immediately after I flipped we hit the gnarliest section of the river with four foot waves and big obstacles like boulders and trees. All we could think of was, "DON'T FLIP" and "Please don't let Mark/Michelle flip" and "Stay straight, stay straight." From there on out we clutched our paddles with white knuckles and scouted constantly for our pull-out site. After every crazy fast section we would yell to each other, "Are you okay?" We were so relieved to finally see the sandy beach in front of our campsite at Steel Bridge Campground. We did a lot of hugging before Mark took off on his bike to get our car. The only other people in the campground were these amazing two couples from Oregon who rolled down on their Harleys and built a really warm fire.