This past weekend TJ and I decided it would be fun to float the Yakima River. It runs right at the edge of the property of the people we are staying with. So we planned where we would park the truck and the car and where we would get out and figured about how long it would take us. Friday we went to Les Schwab and bought a couple inner tubes ($5 each - definitely a good purchase:))
The morning we were going to go, Scott (Scott and Kathy are who we are living with) told us that it's a really pretty float if you start up by Benton City and float down up there. So we decided hey, why not. So we drove out to Horn Rapids Park just about the Horn Rapids dam and parked the truck, then drove out to the bridge we were starting at.
We got in and started floating. It was a perfect day for it. Sun was shining, but it wasn't scorching hot. Just nice and relaxing.
{this isn't actually us...we didn't dare take the camera out of fear of dropping it...but just imagine us floating down a river that looks like this lovely river...and being the only people on it}
Ahhh relaxing...For a minute.
We floated for a little while and realized we really weren't moving that fast. It's a pretty slow river, especially in parts. We happened to start at a slow part. {I will say that it was beautiful - lived up to expectation} We kind of splashed in the water to help ourselves along so that it wouldn't take us forever to get down the river. The first mile or so was relaxing, then we started basically swimming to keep moving.
Then the head wind came up.
Strong head wind.
We were swimming just to keep moving.
How long is this going to take?!
We really didn't know how far it was. The river doesn't follow the road all the way, so we didn't know how many bends etc. there were. We started to get a little worn out. Luckily we had some fruit snacks and granola bars and a lot of water.
We passed some guys fishing and asked them about how far it was to Horn Rapids Dam and they said it was a WAYS down there. Quite a ways.
Shoot. We'll be in the water all day. There's no way to get out because the bank is either very steep, covered in poison oak, or there's star grass floating up to the top, which is not the easiest thing to get through.
Well, we'll just keep floating. We devised a pretty sweet system where we joined ourselves together on our tubes and paddled/swam together. We made much more progress together. We made it about 3 or 4 miles.
Then...
a little tiny boat dock comes in to view not too far down the river.
Hallelujah!
So we decided we should probably get out and walk the rest of the way since we didn't know how far it was, and we'd move faster that way. So we made it to the boat dock and got up to the road. Across the street there was a couple having a garage sale, so we decided we would ask them how far it was to Horn Rapids Park. They said it was at least 6 miles or more down the road. Woof. Then we asked how far it was back to the bridge in Benton City and they said it was 2.5 or 3 miles. So we said thank you and turned around to walk back to where we started. The people we had talked to were nice enough to call out and offer us a ride.
Hallelujah #2!
Her name was Rose, and she drove us back to our car. Then we drove and picked up the truck and went back to the house.
Sounds like it was a bit of a failure, but we honestly had a blast. It was really nice to relax, even if it was momentarily. We still had a ton of fun being outside. We loved being with each other.
We had another adventure :)
Would I do it again? Totally. But maybe plan it where there wasn't going to be a huge wind that day.....and maybe knowing where we were going a little better....but it's all about building memories. And they were definitely built.
