White Water Rafting

During Shelly's graduation weekend, my parents treated the family to a white water rafting trip. We went with the Beyond Limits Adventures rafting company and braved a half day trip down the South Fork of the American River. It was over Memorial Day weekend and the water was very high and fast and literally snow run off. We all had to wear full body wet suits including booties and jackets and we were very grateful we did. 

The rafting company drove us on the bus down to the Chili Bar where we would begin our trip.

Right before starting out trip. Very dry. 

We were having a lot of fun rafting down the river. That's our tour guide John in the back. Dave and Truman weren't able to make it into this picture because they were the ones manning the front. Thank goodness someone was haha. We were all laughing and having a lot of fun. 

The water levels were very high and some of the rapids were crazy. I almost fell out of the raft 3 times! haha. I'm grateful I didn't though because they kept stressing to us in the safety talk ahead of time to not fall into the river because the water is extremely cold right now and you will get hypothermia in 8 minutes and the wetsuit only gives you an extra 2 minutes before you become hypothermic. So, as you can guess we were all very wary of falling into the freezing water. The water was icy and kept splashing up onto us, we would have all died without our wetsuits! We kept joking to our tour guide and asking if it was possible to get hypothermia in our wetsuits sitting on the raft from all the splashing because we were all so cold. haha. 

End picture after having conquered the rapids. Very wet. And totally worth it!

Thanks Mom & Dad for the fun rafting trip!