The Dragon's Keep

canoe trip

i had almost forgotten about it until yesterday when my old roomie from last year called me yesterday and asked if i was still planning on going! wow, it was so much fun. i've been white-water rafting before, but i've never been in a canoe until today and it was quite an experience. we canoed a very calm 5 mile stretch of the Snake River today, and it was slow, easy, and pretty shallow. which is lucky for me since my roomie Camilla enjoys the frigid water and didn't care if we swamped or not. lol. there were 8 of us, a combination of new roomies, old roomies, and old roomies' roomies (heh), and three canoes. so Camilla and i took one and there were three girls in the other two. one was the designated "dry canoe" because they didn't want to get wet, so we kept most of the stuff we wanted to stay dry in that one. i'm glad i bought a disposable camera because i didn't put my camera in the dry boat. i wanted to take pictures, and though Camilla wanted to get swamped for fun, i didn't think she'd actually make us do it because i did have my camera. i did want to get wet, and we had water fights with the other non-dry boat of course, but i didn't want to get completely soaked! i tell ya, it happened so fast and i'm not exactly sure why we tipped over in the first place, but we did. one minute i was paddling and getting into a nice groove and working out my arms pretty well, and the next minute we're leaned way far to the left, and then i'm in the water, halfway under the canoe, and hyperventilating in the cold water trying to get on my feet in the shin-deep river. despite being cold, wet, and shocked, i was laughing my butt off. it really was fun, and i learned how to un-swamp a canoe because of it. all you have to do is tip it over, lift it onto the middle of another canoe, tip it right-side up, and slide it back off into the water, empty. fun stuff. we saw little fish, some ospreys, and even two moose up close! i just hope that my camera will be ok. it still seems to be taking pictures, and i don't hear water when i shake it, so we'll see. lol.

after the float, we went up into the mountains a little higher to see the Mesa Falls, and we were dang close to them, too! i've got some awesome pictures if they turn out. we also went and fed the fish in a pool a little higher up. there were some HUGE rainbow trout and even a few salmon! they're spawning this time of year, otherwise we probably wouldn't have seen many fish at all. i'm pooped, but it was well worth it. so pretty, and so awesome. i now have some inspiration for the book i'm writing, and if my pictures turn out, maybe they will be inspiration for my friend's book, too. ^_^

posted by Erin Duncan @ 8:51 PM