Better late than never: Float Trip #2

While the Jorgensen family and Whitney were here they wanted to go on a float trip so we decided Monday was the best day to go. Earlier that morning I could tell that the weather was not going to be perfect but since they were limited on their time here we just had to do it. We called the Walkers and asked them if they wanted to come and then Joanie, Andrew's sister who is working up in Island Park, had the day off so we had her come with us too. Morgan, Andrew, Leah, Lily, Andrew W., Margie, Joanie, Whitney, Stacy, Kelsie, Hannah, Jonas, Maren and Essie: a big group for floating the river.

BTW: all of these taken by Margie's camera, it is water proof so perfect for this trip.

We loaded everything and headed up to Warm River. Once we got to there we decided to tie everyone together so that we wouldnt get spread out. The clouds started forming and I'm not going to lie, it was pretty darn cold.

Our First Mishap: Margie scraped her knee on the rocks below.

 Lily and the girls liked seeing the water. They couldn't jump out since the raft too tall.

Hannah was with me on my tube and I was really glad that she was, she was the life of the party. Her favorite thing to say when something exciting was about to happen was, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my GOSH!!!" I started counting how many times she said it and I lost count after twenty!

Second Mishap: Joanie got high centered on a rock which, because we were all tied together, made us ALL stop. You can see her in the back of this picture, laughing instead of pushing herself off so that we could continue.

Not too much further down we started heading for an even larger boulder.

The Walkers were on the big tractor tire and ended up going on the right side of the boulder while the rest of us started going on the left.

Leah cowered in fear while the Walkers jumped off their tube to get us unstuck. Margie jumped in the raft and Walker got us unstuck, then jumped back into the large tube.

Margie doesn't have any pictures of the worst mishap but here's the story. There is a point in the river where there are these big column, rock type things that used to hold up a bridge that went across the river. It looked like we were going to clear them and then at the last second Joanie, again, ends up going right towards it. She rams right into it and gets sucked under the water and under the column. Andrew, who was on the complete opposite end of the group, instantly goes into survival mode and miraculously jumps from one tube to the next until he gets to Joanie.
Meanwhile: Hannah, Kelsie and I are instantly thrown off our tubes as soon as Joanie gets wedged. Hannah has a life jacket on, fortunately but we are all three getting swept down the river with out a tube. I grab Hannah and make sure she is with me and she and I both wrestle a bit to see if we can stand up in the river. We can but just barely because the current is so swift. Just as we stand up, Kelsie comes rushing past us and I hurried and tried to grab her. We still are trying to stand and fight the current and pretty soon we were swept into deeper water. Which was good because then we could swim to the side, as soon as I told Hannah to do that she instantly starts utilizing her years of lessons and bee-lines it over to the edge. I was impressed!

Once to the side, of course she was a little emotional but I looked at her straight in the face and asked her if she was okay. She burst into tears but said she was fine.

Back at the column, Andrew, balancing on a tube, is able to pull Joanie with one arm up out of the water by her shirt. Don't ask me how he did it, but Stacy said it was like seeing someone with super human strength rip Joanie straight out of the water. Brotherly instincts I guess.

Joanie jumped back onto a tube, in tears and in a little shock at what just happened. She said it was pretty scary being under the water and wedged between a tube and a rock, but thankful to her brother for saving her life.

The rest of the trip was very calm which was just what we needed.

We finally made it to Jim's Boat Dock where we tried to assess the damage. Fortunately the worst physical damage was just a scraped up knee!

I asked everyone later if they would ever do it again, they all said "Sure!", even Joanie and Hannah. Andrew says that next time we won't tie everyone together, that seemed to be "our first mistake."