So here we are again....my families yearly reunion to Jackson Hole....
What would a trip to Jackson be without a run down the snake river. Oh my goodness the kids had so much fun. We had two float trips....the upper snake was for the benefit of the young ones. All of the grandchildren rode down for this portion, even Kate who is four months old took this float trip. I didn't even know they made life jackets that small. So two boats, stacked full of children floating down the smooth clear waters of the upper snake river.
Our family has 19 grandbabies now...Five girls and fourteen boys. The odds are slightly in the boys favor but the girls we do have are adorable aren't they!!!
The second half of the float trip was the 8 and over crowd. You have to be 8 and a strong swimmer to dare conquer the lower portion of the snake river. We rent our own boats and my two brothers guide us down the river. Notice I did not say safely guide us down the river....usually there is a boat flip or some sort of rafting incident. Nobody has died yet so I guess they are doing a good job. This year we got lucky, the water was really low, so no flipping and no incidents of great importance. Phew!
Two of the favorite parts of our float are add-ons that we do but the professinal rafting guides don't allow....the families who pay a guide to take them down look on at us with pleading eyes, or maybe they are looking at us like we are crazy but either way, we have more fun. First stop is the mother of all rapids on the Snake. Big Kahuna! We float down in our boat just like all the other float trips but then my sneaky brothers pull the boats over and the kids (who dare) hike back up the river and jump in to float through again in only their life vests. I know, I know, I know....scary, yes. You should see the looks of terror on their sweet innocent faces right before they are enveloped in the great initial wave of the rapid....terrifying....then they eventually (hopefully) pop back up again and get jostled around a bit more before finally coming out the other end of the beast. It takes them a good five seconds to realize they have lived, then another five seconds to finish coughing all the water out of their lungs they inhaled while trying to keep their feet heading down stream....then it happens. The smile, the grin of all grins and followed closely behind the, "THAT WAS AWESOME!!!" Hands raised high in the air, fists pumping...I wonder if they are exhilerated by the ride of the fact that they have survived their near death/drowning experience. The crazy thing is they all go back for a second round. Ahh, kids, you have got to love them. So this ranks high on their list of Jackson favorites.
The second river rafting add-on that we get to do while the other rafts float peacefully by is cliff jumping. They have found a spot on the side of the river with a big eddy, a very tall cliff and a nice deep pool at the base. I haven't been on the river for a few years now (having babies and taking turns watching said babies, etc....oh and being terrified of the river because I have floated the snake after being overturned before, scary.) So the newest addition is the high dive and low dive as the kids have dubbed them. So, Ty asks me as we are climbing into the boats if he can go off the high dive when we get down there, I said sure if he dared. He assured me he did dare and was all excited. When we got to said "high" dive I was a bit surprised at what "high" really meant. He meant the really high dive. Holy moly kid! He did it, it was high, super high. Since bother my boys got up the guts to jump off this cliff I decided I had to do it as well. Well, you know how things look taller from the top of them than the bottom...this proved true in this case. My plan was to just rock climb up there and jump right off. My brother spend five minutes dinking around up there goofing off and trying to jump off...I though he was acting but really I think he was trying to get up the courage to actually do it. He swan dove off the thing which is crazy but it did take him a minute to get up the guts. Standing at the top looking down I know understood why it took him so long to get his dive on. The only reason I ended up jumping was because you could literally have not climbed back down the rock ledge we scaled to get up to the high dive. In the end I just sucked it in and jumped, I hate to say I screamed the whole way down but I did. It was such a long drop I actually had time to take a breath and scream a little more before inhaling a mouthful of water on impact....not a good idea to go in screaming. So I sounded like a little pansy girl but I did it. I am terrible at guessing heights but I would say 25 or 30 feet....the high dive at our pool is about 12 feet high and that feels tall to me when I go off that so this was a big leap. The boat floating by really were looking enviously at us while we were cliff jumping. It really is a lot of fun, when you are not terrified.
The mass chaos that is our Jackson trip was well tamed as we loaded and reloaded the boats. The banana dingy was a big hit. The cousins took turns rowing this little baby down stream. Amanda and Jonathan guided it successfully through the Big Kahuna and didn't even dump....I was impressed. They often rescued random cousins who had floated away from their main boat. That is another fun activity that we can do because we rent our own boats. The cousins jump out at just about any point in the river and float down on their own. They have fun attacking the other boat and pirating whatever loot they can. Fun times were had by all. It is nice to have such multi-talented brothers. Attorney, CPA, and licensed river-guides....who would have thought?
Fun and safe trip was had by all.
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