Sunday we went whitewater rafting on the White Salmon River in Washington.  And, by “we”, I mean myself with some friends from work!  Scott went with me to the headquarters, just not rafting on the river.  The trip that we chose consisted of class III and IV rapids and one of the tallest commercially rafted waterfalls (12 foot).  The water in the river was about 40 degrees!  Thankfully, the air temperature was about 90.  The company provided us with wetsuits, booties, helmets, and life jackets.  Putting the wetsuits on in 90 degree weather was no fun and even less fun was the 8 mile non air conditioned bus ride to the put in.  I thought I was going to melt before we got there. When the bus stopped, I let out a sigh of relief, ready to get on the river.  Only, we had to hike down a trail through the woods to the river while they ziplined the rafts down.  So hot!!  When we finally got in the rafts and into the first rapids, I was thankful for the sweatsuits!  I mean wetsuits.   Haha. We had so much fun in our trip, but we did miss one of our friends who couldn’t go last minute due to a family emergency.  Because we had an extra spot on our boat, they put a brother and sister duo on our raft.  The brother would NOT follow our guides directions and it was driving me nuts!  But, we made it work.  At one point we had to portage around part of the river that was not raftable.  Everyone had the choice of whether to walk all the way around down to the boats, or walk part of the way and then jump off a cliff and swim to the rafts.  Of course, I jumped!  Everyone on our boat except for the sister jumped.  Also, everyone had a choice of whether to go over the finally falls.  Again, everyone in our boat except for the sister went for it!  Scott made it to the bridge above the falls just in time to see us go over it!  I wore my GoPro on my helmet.  Didn’t take as many videos as I would have liked because I was worried about the battery lasting until the final falls, and it was difficult to reach up to start and stop it while paddling.  Maybe we will post some of those videos at a later time.  So glad my new friends were willing to go on this adventure so that I didn’t have to do it alone!  These pictures are mostly ones that were taken by the company photographer.

Here are the sequence photos of us going over the falls.  Notice that the entire raft was under water at one point!

Here are some pictures after we made it back!

On the way home, as we drove along the Columbia River, we saw tons of people wind surfing and kite surfing.  I have no idea how they don’t get all tangled in each other.  Also, if you look close you can see the helicopter with a water bucket hanging below it.  Lots of fires in Oregon right now.