The Flow

Wow, it's been a while. Sorry folks! I'm really starting to realize how badly I need a camera. I've been doing some pretty crazy things lately, and I have nothing to show for it! Agh! Hopefully some of my friends will post some pictures on F-Book so I can steal them and put them on here. Anyway, here's an update!

After about a month and a half of living in Roseville, I ran out of money and decided to move back to Utah. Mom, Hanna, and CJ came out to Cali to visit Mac and I for a week, then I packed up everything and we went to Tahoe en route to home. We had an awesome time hiking and being whitetrash in our walmart tubes as we floated down the "river". (All the rich people in their $30-a-person rafts kept looking at us like Umm.... is that legal?). While I was up there I got a call from my friend Ben begging me to go on a Salmon River trip, and they were leaving in 2 days. Somehow it all fell into place, and CJ and I left for Utah the next morning.

I'm not sure why, but I have a history of traveling places without complications. It always surprises me whenever I reach my destination in one piece. The biggest problem was that we stopped at Taco Bell in Wendover and I ate waaaaay too many beans. Poor CJ :(

The next morning was Sunday, (that would have been about a week and a half ago, but it seems like it's been years!) and I went to my home ward by myself. (Except for dad, but he was on the stand.) I remember when we used to fill up the whole second bench. It was weird. And I wore hot pink, which was also really strange. It was the only dress I could find! Dad gave me the weirdest look.

I got home, unpacked my car, showered lots, went to a meeting at the Wilderness Rec Center for the river trip, got home, packed everything in my dry bag, slept for 3 hours, got up, and drove back to the WRC. I was in a car with a bunch of pepole, and this 27-year-old guy named Daniel who runs the whole WRC, and he's married with 2 kids, and he's a bishop, and he has a broken ankle so he was on crutches for the whole trip. CRAZY GUY. Hey Caleb, I got a bunch of great ideas for the next time we want to do something.... funny to someone, hehe :)

(I just got stung by a bee.... hang on a sec...)

Ok i'm back. And i'm still alive! Wahoo! So we drove to Riggins Idaho, (about 11 hours away?) and set up camp. Me and Ben's girlfriend Denver set up our hammocks and hung out for like 4 hours waiting for Ben to get back from dropping our vehicles off at the end of the river. We got a good sleep though, paddled all the next day in the crazy hot sun, got rained on that night, paddled even harder, set up camp, and really got rained on. Actually, it was devil rain, mixed in with wind that was blowing down trees and embedding sand into our skin, and hail the size of quarters, and lightning that for some reason didn't hit us, but hit the camp next to us. We grabbed everything we could and tried to secure it all, but the wind was so strong it was blowing us over. Denver was laying on a mattress and a tarp, and it kept lifting her off the ground. All of our hammocks got trashed and some of our tarps blew away, so after about 20 minutes of trying to survive, it calmed down and Ben and this other guy James ran down to the main camp to see if everyone else was ok and to find us all a place to sleep. Meanwhile, Denver and I got out of all our wet clothes and crawled under a tarp to try to get warm again. It made me realize that being wet and cold really can get super dangerous, especially when we were both shaking so hard then all of a sudden Denver stopped shaking. Bad news. We started digging down to warmer dryer sand, and I think that helped her get her blood pumping again. Then the guys came back, so we wrapped up in the tarp and ran down to the main beach and dove under the raft bunker they had made. Daniel had found a couple extra dryish sleeping bags, so we were able to make it through the night without dying. Yay! I love not dying!

It rained the next two days on the river, and our last day was a twenty-mile stretch on the really slow Snake river. We paddled really hard. I had sand in every crack and hole in my body. It was delicious. I've never been so happy to see houses and our car before. We were supposed to drive back to Riggins and camp again, but all of our equipment was wet so we just drove home! I got into my bed at about 3am. Aaaahhhh..... then I got back up a couple hours later and drove back to the WRC to unload and clean all the equipment. fun fun.

The best part about the trip was that everyone thought it was hilarious that we were in a super miserable situation! It was awesome! Sometimes there's no choice but to be optimistic, because if you get grumpy it affects 17 other people and makes the trip awful. So we all laughed a lot. And the best part was, Daniel hired me! So now I have a job! YES!!! I get to go on crazy adventures and get paid to do it now. Um, sounds pretty ideal to me. I start tomorrow :)

See? I told you my life was boring.