...We Conquered!

One other activity we did in Oregon that I wanted to post about was our rafting trip. Some friends of my mom took us down the Rogue River on their raft! It was such a fun trip. Ben and I had never gone rafting before, so we took it kind of easy. Most of the trip was on beautiful, calm water but we hit some rapids here and there that were a lot of fun. We actually even almost lost Mom on one of them! Luckily Ben and I were able to each grab one of her legs and keep her in. :) We also saw some wildlife on the trip: Osprey, deer, mink, ducks, geese, fish (dead and alive), and a vulture.

This trip has a little bit more of a story to it, though. The event started off so beautifully! It was sunny, hot (upper 80's), and perfect weather to be on the cool river.


As we went along, it became cloudy. It was actually kind of nice to have the clouds to cool off the temperatures a little bit.


A little bit later, the wind started to pick up, further cooling the temperatures. It was nice except it made our wet clothes feel a lot colder against our skin after each splash from the rapids!
Even later, the wind started to pick up even more. The poor man that was rowing our boat had to row against it! Yuck!
Then, it started to sprinkle a little. Okay, no biggie. We were already wet, so what did it matter?


Then it started to rain hard. The weather said the storm wouldn't hit until the next day, but it was wrong (go figure)! Again, it was fine since we were already wet. We were getting a little bit cold, but we were having a good time.
That's when it started to hail. This wasn't just little BB-sized hail either. It was marble-sized!! It started pelting us so hard and bouncing off our skin, our heads, and the raft! We started screaming (or mostly I did), and yet we found ourselves laughing at the same time. How did such a beautiful day turn into a big hail storm?! We laughed and laughed at our rotten luck. At the same time, however, we decided that it was so much more memorable and unique this way! At one point we even pulled the raft over and took shelter from the stinging hail under some trees. At that point, we were drenched and shivering from the cold rain, hail, and wind. As the storm started to let up, we got back in the raft and made our way around the last few bends before we came to our stopping place.

If you look at my arm, you can see two red spots where I was hit by the large hail (sorry, it's not too great of a pic). It left those little marks and bruises on my arms and legs. Mom had some on the back of ther neck, and Ben has tough skin because he didn't have any!
It was so much fun, despite the painful hail. I would say that we truly conquered the Rogue River and its storm!!
Here are a few more pics: