Did I Tell You About The Time...

 Have I told you about the time my family all went whitewater rafting in Colorado? Well, let me tell you that was an adventure and the reason my hair totally turned gray. It was 2006 and my husband and I decided us and the kids badly needed a vacation, but not the beach which was our usual choice. No this time we headed to the mountains, and not just any mountains, we chose the Rockies and a very, very cold river called the Arkansas which was actually in Colorado but it ended in Arkansas.

Anyway, none of us had ever been rafting on a river before. I had been canoeing, my husband had done the same but the kids had only done inner tubing down a slow river in our home state of Missouri.

But hey we were needing some adventure and boy did we get it.  We signed up and filled out permission slips for our kids, 'Warning: your life may be in peril during this float... you are signing away your right to sue us if you don't come back.' 

Okay, it didn't really say that, but it did warn us of the risks of injury or death by getting into this raft. That is pretty much the same thing and made me stop cold as I was signing everyone's release forms. Seriously, maybe this was too dangerous for our three kids ages, 20, 18 and 15.   But being the kind of parents that think we should carefully expose our children to different adversity and adventures in life so they know how to handle themselves confidently, we went ahead and my hair began graying at that moment.

We got in the raft, learned how to stroke with our paddles in unison and set off down the very fast current of a 50 degree river. It felt more like 20 degrees but our guide assured us we would not survive in that kind of water so it had to be 50 degrees. The rafts always travel in twos so there was another family behind us, but they decided not to paddle and let the guide to the risky stuff!

  We took several  Class I and II rapids and feeling confident headed down the pike so to speak to the Widow maker rapids.  Boy was that aptly named, except it was almost the WidowER maker.  

We hit the side of a rock and flipped the boat enough that my son, one daughter and me went flying through the air and into the water. My daughter fell on top of me and we found ourselves struggling to get our heads above the water. I kept pushing my daughter's backside to push her up, but it turns out that I was pushing the bottom of the boat.  She had already  bobbed up along with my son and I was the missing person.

My husband, our other daughter and the guide were searching frantically for me on all sides of the boat when suddenly I popped up out of breath and the guide grabbed me by the life jacket and yelled, "Swim to shore!" and threw me back into the water. My son, daughter and I had to swim to shore while he, my husband and other daughter had to paddle to keep from flipping over.

We made it and the WidowER maker did not win that day. But boy was that scary!  As soon as we all got back in the raft there were hugs all around and our adventure continued to the pull out place.  

Since that experience, we actually did go whitewater rafting again this time in West Virginia on the New River. But thankfully it was not the life threatening experience it had been in Colorado.  

I don't know now, at my age if I would chance doing the crazy Arkansas ride again or just rest leisurely in a raft paddled by the guide, like the family who was behind us did. They didn't even get wet but boy they got a great picture of us!