Day 14

Ok, I'm finally back on schedule with writing this blog. We were able to sleep in a bit today and the kids spent some time visiting the resident bison that live at this hotel They were even able to pet them... well, the babies anyway.

We had big plans for today that we have been looking forward to this whole trip ~ whitewater river rafting! As you can see, we were successful at meeting this goal, even though we just scheduled it this morning. This photo is from the end of a HUGE rapid we went through. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

We headed back into Jackson Hole and had lunch at the Wort Restaurant, which is one of the oldest hotels in town. When Brenna's kid's meal was delivered, a woman from the hotel came to us and asked Brenna if she would be a junior sheriff for the town. She said yes and was sworn in right there. She received her badge and a chocolate silver dollar as payment. It was really cute and she loves having a new souvenir.

We then hurried over to Mad River Boat Trips for an 8-mile whitewater trip and dinner. To be honest, I was a bit nervous since I'm not a real strong swimmer and Brenna was nervous as well. We loaded onto the bus and headed down to the launch spot. We were divided into boats and were lucky enough to have really, really nice people on our boat. A family from Kansas City. We got our life-jackets on and loaded into the boat. I headed to the back, Dan and Brenna were in the front and Alex was behind them. We took off and pretty quickly, Brenna fell completely in love with rafting and basically became the hood ornament for the boat, hanging over the front to get soaked. Alex was such a stud on the boat and paddled with the best of them!

I soon relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Our guide was awesome and let us try lots of fun things. Everyone jumped overboard and floated for a wee bit... and by everyone I mean, not me! But Brenna was the first in and loved it. Since I hadn't jumped in, our guide made sure to turn the boat at the next rapid in order to ensure that I was completely christened with river water. My sinuses are clear, thank you.

We stopped partway and climbed up a hill to a setting with tables and a bbq. As we dropped our life-jackets off, Brenna wasted no time and ran straight to get a cheeseburger, salads, brownies and a drink. It was pretty good but only enhanced by the ability to sit overlooking the river and watching other rafts and kayaks tackle the big rapids. We saw plenty of people pop out of their boats or flip their kayaks, which brought my nerves back.

We got back in the raft and headed for the big rapids. This was the only time that Brenna sat on a seat and had me hold the back of her jacket. It was just a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!! We had so much fun and the biggest smiles on our faces.

It ended all too soon and we have all decided that another rafting trip is on our list! The people we rafted with had a waterproof camera and took pictures of us saying they would send them to us so hopefully they don't lose our address!

We start heading home in the morning. We're going to hit part of Idaho just to say we did... not sure where we will end up Friday night but if there is WiFi, I'll update this blog.