Floating Down the River

It's summertime in the Pacific Northwest. That means...beautiful blue skies. Gorgeous green trees. Daylight for like 23 hours a day. Okay, not quite 23 but it's light out until at least 9:30 pm and the sun is up by 5:30 am. Temps hover around 80-85 degrees most days.

Summertime also means the rivers aren't -34,000 degrees and you can spend a little bit of time in them without having to become numb first. The rivers are warm enough that you can stay in them for a little bit and it no longer feels like a millions of small needles impaling your skin as you enter the water. The increase in temps brings people to the rivers in droves and we were decided to join them.

Hubbs has been eyeballing kayaks for awhile. He would love to have a few to "throw up on top of the car" and head out to paddle on the water at...well, anywhere.  On a kayak scouting mission, we decided to semi-quench the paddling the river beast and buy some inner tubes for the family.

Tower-o-tubes!  

 And the lifesaver lungsaver 12V air pump. It inflates and deflates, woohoo! 

Biggs has gone tubing a few times with Boyfriend's family this summer at Lewisville Park so we decided to try it out. For our maiden tube voyage, we brought along Nephew. He had an old school tube to use. You know, the semi truck tire tubes that can withstand any and everything. I have to admit, I was a little jealous of his tube's "I will not be punctured or delate for any reason today" promises. But, I let it go because it's a sin to covet what others have. 

Squished into the backseat, the cousins were all a-chatter about the upcoming adventure. Okay, it was Lil' Miss and Cousin who were non-stop chatters. That's how they roll! It's nice that they are such good friends. I truly hope it lasts throughout their entire lives. Biggs pretty much texted Boyfriend the entire drive to and from. That's kind of what she does these days. At least we were able to steal her away for some family time. :)

Everyone was patient as I pumped up tube after tube when we reached the park. Of course I wanted to snap some before pics but they had been patient enough that I told them I for sure wanted after pics.

The water was amazing! It was slow moving, warmer than I expected and calm where we entered. Down the river a little ways were the rapids. Boy was it shallow! Planking as well as we could on top of our tubes, we got stuck a lot on rocks. We spent as much time getting unstuck as we did floating...maybe even more. Our first run down the river, we were sitting in our tubes. You know, bottoms in the middle with our legs over one side. This made planking essential to float over rocks.

On this run, Biggs was knocked off her tube and smashed her knee into the rocks hard. She wasn't too keen on going down the rapids again. Little did I know, I'd understand her pain first hand on our second adventure.

After riding the rapids, we let the kids swim and play on the rope swing for awhile. I had tube guard duty and found a nice little stack of rocks on the far side of the river where I could easily float in one spot while the kids played. Hubbs went exploring up the river in his tube. He loves exploring and it was fun to watch him shrink and shrink and shrink as he back paddled upstream until he disappeared around the bend. While he was gone, Nephew found a very long, water soaked stick. He asked Biggs to use it to measure how deep the river was at that spot. From what we could tell, it was about 10 feet deep in that area. Biggs then used the stick to hold her in place and decided to scissor kick until Hubbs returned and got to where she was. Little did she know, Hubbs' tube came unplugged and he had to stop about 20 yards from her to blow air into his tube again. Her legs were burning but she kept kicking!

We went down the rapids one more time. Biggs decided to walk down to our exit point and wasn't quite up to navigating through the rocks again, yet. This time, we went down the rapids on our bellies. It was easier to maneuver and we didn't get stuck quite as much. It looked like we had figured out how to do this!

We walked back to the car and in Mamarazzi fashion, I snapped some pics before I even let them dry off. Hey, a Mamarazzi has to do what a Mamarazzi has to do! 

Lil' Miss has developed the inability to smile in almost all pictures these days. She's always making funky faces instead. 12-year olds! 

Everyone needs to take a selfie once in awhile. Selfies are often the only proof that I was on a trip.

Love this girl! 

The compilation of the days events. 

Tubing was far better than I expected. Mostly due to the warm water! I really dislike being cold. It was fun to have Nephew with us for this first trip....it won't be the last!