Rafting on the San Juan River

I didn't take any photographs today, since we spent most of the day on the river or riding in a van to and from the river. We met at the Wyndham Activity Center at 10:45 AM to met the group for the rafting trip. There was only one other couple in our group, and they were from St. Louis. The trip to the put-in-spot took about 45 minutes. Once we arrived there was a professional photographer there to take our picture. He actually drove his vehicle along the road ahead of us and took more photographs once we were in the raft and on our way. Of course, these photos were very expensive, but I did buy one shot that I posted above.

Our river rafting guide was a girl named Hannah, and she was a year younger than Lisa. She was very pleasant and helpful along the way, and even though she was young, I felt that we were in good hands. Because of the time of the year, most of the river was fairly slow, but there were some Class I and II whitewater rapids. When we stopped for a break about halfway, everyone did some swimming and David jumped off of a big rock into the water. I was too chicken, plus the bottom was so muddy that I was afraid I would loose one of my Keen water shoes if I kept going, so I turned back. The mud kept trying to suck the shoes off my feet, and since I know Susan lost one of these kind of shoes in some mud, I wasn't taking any chances. In addition to the raft, we had two rubber "Duckeys," a type of inflatable kayak. (You can see one of these behind the raft in the photo above.) The other couple road in them for the first part of the trip, and David and I had them the second half. We were actually manning the kayaks during the part of the river that had the biggest rapids, and I have to admit, I was rather scared a few times. Twice I got stuck against a rock in some big rapids and was afraid that I would turn over, but fortunately I managed to keep the kayak upright. David said that he wished he had video of me in the rapids because I started paddling so fast every time we hit some rapids. I'm sure I looked ridiculous.

The trip back to town in the van took just as long or longer than the trip out, and we were pretty worn out and tired from paddling the kayaks and being baked in the sun, but fortunately we did a good job with the sunscreen, and neither of us was really sunburned.

After getting showers, we went out to eat at JJ's Riverwalk Grill. We had salmon tacos, and they were very good, but pretty hot and spicy. As a result, we had to cool our mouths down with some ice cream a little later in the evening. It was a great day, and tomorrow we plan to go to the Ranger Station in town and ask about some good hiking trails.