Whitewater Rafting in Oregon

Whitewater Rafting in Oregon

This year in Medford, about three hours south of Portland, Oregon, my family had a giant reunion. I have seventeen aunts and uncles, so we always have to rent a twenty bedroom house for a week somewhere fun. This year was my Aunt Amy's turn to choose where we had the family reunion, and she obviously chose Oregon.

Since there are so many grandchildren, we always have a couple of adults in charge of the teenager activities, some in charge of the middle-age activities, and so on. We were going to go white water rafting, but it was about eighty dollars a person. Then we found out that a nearby Scout troop was going on a overnight rafting trip and invited the male teenagers to come. It also happened to be that one of the Scout leaders owned a rafting company that made the best quality rafts in the world, ranging from twelve thousand dollars to about fifty thousand dollars! Because of this, he takes the Scouts on rafting trips three times a year with some of his own rafts, and for free.

A few days later, we met up with the Scout troop at about 9:00 am in the morning. We drove over to the river, and inflated the three rafts to hold the camping gear and food, and the nine kayaks for us to paddle in. Over the next few hours, we had tons of fun balancing on our kayaks while standing up, fighting and capsizing each other's kayaks, and climbing up cliffs to jump off ropes swings into the frothy water. 

At about noon, we found a little beach that would be perfect to stop on, to take a break from the strenuous paddling. We flipped over one of the rafts to serve as a table, and piled all our lunch meat and tortillas on it. We bathed in the nurturing sun and ate lunch, and then shot potato guns at the outcroppings of rock on the other side of the river, and even tried to shoot a bird. Then, we packed up our supplies and continued on our long, overnight journey to Grant's Pass.

We didn't make it far until we came upon some tall, steep rock cliffs and decided to jump off them. The cliffs were about forty feet high, and we had to precariously climb up them using the pits, nooks, crannies and moss to grip the rock and make our way up to the dropoff at the top of the cliff. Because the outcroppings were so high, when we jumped off them we had enough time to realize what we were doing and scream on our way down to a watery boom! as we hit the water. We were wearing PFDs, so when we careened into the water it launched us back out, about a foot in the air. We took about a half an hour doing this, but soon had to stop and continue on, our energy spent.

When I got back home, food had never smelled so good, and sleep never seemed so welcome.