Rollin' On the River

Last week I spent a few days on the Green River with my son. (And with a few other people... It was the "high adventure" trip for the Varsity Scouts in my Ward.)

It was a REALLY fun trip.  We put in at the State Park in Green River City and we got out at Mineral Bottom.

The river was running high and fast.  There were times when the current approached 6 miles per hour.  Rowing really hard in still water, we might have been able to do 5 miles per hour, so if we needed to, we MIGHT be able to stay still in the water if we worked really hard at it.

We had to take everything we needed with us.  All of our food, all of our water, all of our belongings for the week were tied into our canoes.  We had a thorough check by "Ranger Fife" at the boat ramp at the state park.  He made sure we had all of the required items--extra paddles, life jackets in good repair, a method of packing out our waste (That's another blog entry altogether that you don't want to read, so I won't write it.), whistles, throwable floatation devices, and a lot more.

All-in-all, we had a fantastic time.  We camped wherever we could get out of the river.  That was sometimes difficult because most of the beaches that are available later in the year were under water due to an unusually high spring runoff.  Some fished, some played in the water where it was safer up side channels, we hiked to a point where we could see the river on both sides of us.  Nobody really got a sunburn.  There was very little bickering between the Varsity scouts.  We didn't tip over a single canoe.  We only had to fight mosquitoes on the last night of the trip.

We came out of the river 58 miles downstream, dirty and windblown, but very happy.  I hope I get the opportunity to do it again with my younger son in a couple of years.