Day 38: Rafting, not too much white water, though

No riding today.

After waking up with red, puffy eyes, all swollen, we had to decide how we were going to live the rest of our lives, starting with today.

These pictures were taken by our host.

We had the hotel breakfast, which was pretty good, then decided we would do some kind of river trip, since there are all kinds of companies in Salmon offering white water trips, dinner "cruises" on rafts, guided fishing and just plain renting you a set of water wings to float down the river. There is a place literally across the street from our hotel called Idaho Adventures and a quick review online revealed that they were a reasonable bet to take us white water rafting. We walked over about 9:30 and the day trip had long since departed. We explained that we had a commitment the prior evening to slash our wrists and we were unsure how we would be this morning so we had been reluctant to make a commitment for this morning thus, here at mid-morning. Just with red, puffy eyes. An afternoon river trip would be fine. 

They said that the guide for the day would be back around 2:00 pm and could take us for a couple of hours or we could just rent a raft and they would drive us up the Salmon River, throw us into the water and we could float downstream until we reached their office. But the minimum was for three people and if it was just the two of us, we would have to pay for the third to make it worth their while. Nan voted for the guided rafting tour. I voted for the raft rental and the ride up the river and we would teach ourelves the finer points of white water rafting. Since Nan neglected to bring her wallet, we took the latter option. And signed the waiver.

We went back shortly after ten and were driven up river and thrown into the river. Well, not literally. I'm sure they were thinking that the cost of the rental and ride would be enough to recover their raft after we didn't show up in a few hours. Nan promptly indicated to me that she wanted to sit in the back. I said that's fine but she would be in charge of the steering. That didn't sit too well so in fact, she opted to sit in the front. 

The fact of the matter is that other than a couple of panicky moments about 10 minutes into the float, it was more on the pedestrian side than "white water rafting" and if we had had a guide, the guide would have been bored to tears. As for the panicky moments, we had some rolling waves and one of us was trying to figure out which side was "left" and which side was the "other left". However, that didn't take long and pretty soon our paddling was in synch. 

Once we got the hang of it, the afternoon was really quite relaxing.  For the most part, we just had to drift with the river and only paddled when we wanted to avoid trees in the water. They told us to take as long as we wanted and if we wanted, we could float past the town and call for a pick-up about four miles down river. We did stop for about 20 minutes on a small island in the river to eat a snack and drink some water so all in, we were out about three hours, without drifting past the town. We had fun. 

After our raft trip, we walked into town to pick up some supplies for dinner and had an ice cream. Back at the hotel, we went for a swim in the pool, ate dinner, and prepared for tomorrow's departure.

In a window at a (former?) pawn shop in Salmon.

Ice cream, and lots of it.

Outside the Owl Club. Not sure of the significance of the arrows.

Salmon's fun spot. Their words.

Nan, sometimes cowgirl.

When I was whining to a friend last night about getting
 the game on the hotel room's big TV, he suggested it
 was time to find a bar. I said "too far to walk" and "not safe".
This was in the window at the bar.