Kayaking Adventure

This weekend I went kayaking with my dad, Dayna (my dad's girlfriend), Shelby, my aunt and uncle Larry and Dixie, and a bunch of guys my dad goes to work with and their kids. There was about fifteen of us and we went down the muddy creek in the San Rafael. I guess there are only a few weeks in the year that you can kayak down it where there is enough water. This weekend however, the water was the highest it has been in a long time. We woke up Saturday morning at 4:45 and left the house around 5:30-6ish. It was supposed to be a three and a half hour drive and we ended up getting lost down the wrong road for about an hour and that was the start of a very long day. ha We finally got in the river a little before one and Shelby and I tipped over on the very first corner. She hit into the side of the bank and I was making fun of her telling her she didn't know how to steer and then I ended up slamming into her and we both flipped over. I then noticed my paddle was floating down the river without me...I was literally up the creek without a paddle. ha We got back on our kayaks and I floated down without my paddle for awhile until I found someone from our group who had saw my paddle and grabbed it for me. The trip was eighteen miles and was supposed to take us about four and a half hours. We didn't get to the end of it until eight thirty that night, therefore it took us seven and a half hours to get down the stupid thing. It was white water pretty much the whole time and had pretty bad rapids. Did I mention none of us had ever kayaked down a river before? My dad had taken us kayaking on a lake before but this was completely different. We all ended up tipping over quite a few times and when we would tip over we had to hold onto the kayaks so we didn't lose them and the current was going so fast it would pull us down the river and we would bang our legs against rocks and it hurt really bad. I got sucked under the water a few times and I was really scared. My aunt Dixie did end up losing her kayak and paddle down the river after she wrecked one time. Her husband Larry had to float down the river with nothing and she took his kayak. A few miles down someone was able to grab their kayak and then another mile or so past that someone had found their paddle so they were extremely lucky. It did slow us down quite a bit though and we thought for sure we were going to have to camp along side of the river that night with nothing. Another thing that slowed us down a lot was that our kayaks would fill up with water and then would tip over extremely easy...so we were constantly stopping off the side of the bank and having to dump the water out of the kayaks. I ended up tipping over about five times and two of which I got banged up pretty bad. Shelby and I did the whole thing without any shoes and by the end of the trip my feet were killing me. There was a few times when the water was calm that I actually enjoyed being on the river. It was extremely beautiful there and it could have been a lot of fun if the water hadn't been so bad and rough. When we finally made it to the end we had to wait for all of the dads to drive about an hour to go back and pick up the other vehicles...so we sat there in the dark for about two hours. When they got back they had to load up all of the kayaks but the kayaks were down a hill and we weren't allowed to drive vehicles down there. Luckily we had two fourwheelers and they bought the kayaks up one at a time with the fourwheelers. We didn't end up leaving the pick up spot until twelve thirty that night. It took us forever to drive on the dirt road until we could get back to the main highway and we were almost out of gas. We finally made it to the first town at three thirty and barely made it there because we were so low on gas. We filled up and drove a little further then we had to stop and sleep for awhile. We didn't end up getting home until seven the next morning. We were all so tired and sore and dirty. I showered and ate something and then went to bed. When I woke up my whole body was aching. I am still way sore and hurt all over but we were grateful we made it out of there and home safely. Here are some pictures of the muddy creek in the San Rafael that we kayaked down.