Remember that trip down the Snake River when I was 12? That was the greatest.

On our way to the river!

Our first run.

Second run.

Lost another one!

Don't worry, Chassies got his foot!

Hey, where's our boat?

Cold and wet but happy to have made this trip in one piece!

Justin's brother Troy invited us to float the Snake River Friday with his wards youth the Friday after Tommys wedding and since it had been a couple years since we had gone we were so excited! We woke up super early to make the 5 hour drive to WY. For our first trip down we were with four of the kids, two boys in the front, two girls in the middle, me and Justin in the back and our cousin David was our guide. The first 10 minutes of our trip went great...then one of the girls fell out and she was under for about 5-10 seconds, it was so scary! After that the girls were both nervous and every time we hit even a little rapid they were both in the middle of the boat. The boys were pretty much worthless and none of them would paddle to save their lives! Which left me Justin and David doing all the work, which makes for not a very fun ride. The funniest thing ever happened though- coming up to the two biggest rapids, kahuna and lunch counter, Dave had stressed the importance of paddling through them so we can hit them right and not flip the raft. Instead, they decide to put their paddles in the air and yell like they were on a ride at Disneyland. Of course they got off balance and one of them (Chris) fell in. His friend flipped out and started yelling at the top of his lungs "Chriiiiis! Chriiiiiiis! Chris is in the water! Save him! Chris, my friend! Save my friend!! Chris! My friend!" and then he starts jumping across the boat trying to get to him. Maybe you needed to be there but it was hilarious. Finally we made it to the end of the river and all that was left was to get to the boat ramp...sounds easy enough right? Well somehow my side of the raft dipped down a little and both of the kids fell out. So we were trying to get them the rope and back to the boat and missed the ramps. We ended up missing them by about 300 feet and just barely making it to the last place where we could have gotten out. Had to hike up a super steep hill to get out and pull the boat up it too. It was stressful and a mess and I was so glad to be done!

So the second trip down we decided to change it up and had one of Troys friends Teg, me, Justin, Chassie and David guiding again. We were so excited to have such a good raft and it was great until we got to blind canyon (blind because right after it is kahuna and lunch counter that you can't see) we hit just a little rapid but behind it was a pretty good reversal that sucked the side of the boat down us and flipped us all completely out! I was under just a few seconds but long enough to panic a little! So we had to all get back to the boat and get in quickly knowing the big ones were just around the corner. In the process we lost 2 paddles which left it to Teg Justin and David to do all the work the rest of the river and me and Chassie got a free ride.

All in all we had a great time, more eventful than usual but still a ton of fun! Randy always says that one of the best things about the river is all the stories that we have from it. Every time we get together we sit and talk about all the things that have happened and the stories never get old! I'm pretty sure the trips we had this time will come up a few times in the future too. Thanks Troy and Heidi for the invite and Randy for taking us all and David for keeping us alive! Best part is we get to do it all again in a week!