white water and lightning storms.

After getting a call from Kyle and Janae late Thursday night, we decided to be spontaneous and take the extra 2 seats on their rafting trip that they were leaving for the next day.

We grabbed some snacks, Gatorade, water (and more water!), sunscreen, and our camping gear, and then headed out on Friday night to our campsite 3 hours away at Westwater.  Two hours into the drive we ran into some incredible lightning storms.  Rather than pouring rain, they provided some spectacular lightning shows in the sky.  They were all over the nighttime sky and we got to see each individual lightning storm light up the storm.  

Already a successful trip just 2 hours in!

We made it into camp after sundown and set up Kyle and Janae's tent in the dark.  We got a good night's sleep (thank you amazing REI self-inflatable sleeping pads) and woke up to a gorgeous morning!

After packing up camp and eating muffins and bananas for breakfast, we grabbed a few before pictures and then got ready to put in the rafts!

{Janae and Kyle}

{T and J}

And then we took a random picture of the shoes we took to get wet while rafting... they did the job and kept our feet protected!  Next time, we need to get Chaco's and get cool tan lines.

After a safety speech and the "how to get back into the raft after you fall out" talk, we jumped into the rafts and headed down the Colorado River.  Nae and I made a new friend on our raft.  It was pretty awesome how quickly you become friends when you're out rafting and facing close to death situations.

{Nae and Elle}

Then I needed a picture with our new friend.  Taking pictures was a way to waste a little bit of time during the hour or so that it took to hit the first portion of white water.  

{J and Elle}

The men on our raft.  Thank you Alan for being our guide and not getting us killed.

{T, Alan, and Kyle}

T caught a candid shot of me talking about one of my upcoming students that I knew that year that liked putting stickers on her face.  Can you tell that I love talking about my students already?

Besties!  

It was so fun to go on a trip together again.  In high school we always went on orchestra tours, FCCLA trips, and cabin road trips all year long.  We don't get to spend that much time together nearly as much as we'd like.  

AND the fact that Nae is super busy at work during the summer.  She's pretty much rockin' in her career as a project manager.  She's always been so business-oriented and I'm so proud of how hard she works!

I digress.

{Jae and Nae}

Then we put the camera away in our dry bag as we came up on the white water rapids.  The first couple went smoothly and then our raft becamewhat T likes to refer to as the "handicap" raft.  Instead of going around the rocks like we were supposed to, our raft tended to shoot right towards them.  We ran right over the rocks and got stuck right in the middle of some of the rapids.  We were lucky to not overturn and we were pretty quick to react to some of the situations.

One of our oar locks broke going through one of the major rapids and we were a one oar raft until we caught up to the rest of our rafting group.  After comparing all of our oars, we found out that we had all of the spare oars that didn't have the locking mechanism to steady the oar in the oar lock.  We quickly switched out some of our oars with the other rafts spares and had much smoother rafting the rest of the way.  Although, we did have a load of fun and adventure being the "handicap" raft.  I don't know if I would've had it any other way!

Everyone had a great attitude and stayed calm and happy during every complication and every hiccup of the trip.  I usually stress out during those experiences and I was as happy as a clam!  Our guide was calm and collected and Kyle and Tyler were so great at keeping us all safe and happy while being problem solvers.  I'd go on the trip again in a heartbeat!

After the white water stretch, the water settled down and we busted open the coolers and handed out sandwiches, sodas, candy bars, and chips to chow down on.  

Apple Shasta was T's fav.  He burped right in the middle of the picture.  

Kyle requested a double decker man sandwich and got it.  The thing was massive.

{Elle the photo-bomber}

He loved it.

We made it out alive!

On a side note, helloooo hottie husband of mine!  My word how he still gives me butterflies in my stomach when he gives me a wink or big ol' grin from across the raft.  I feel like a little schoolgirl all over again.  

Overall, we loved our whole rafting experience!  I'll admit, I was a little apprehensive about the whole trip to start off with.  Spontaneous is definitely not my middle name and this trip was a blast!  I wouldn't change one thing.  Except for changing the overcast day into one a little warmer to get rid of my awful farmer's tan.  Sigh.  I guess I won't have the nice golden tan I always dream of for Meet the Teacher Night.  Bring on the freckled tan. 

Like always.

Good friends.  Beautiful scenery.  Great company!

We're going to need to do this again.  Maybe I'll just skip out on the first week of school and take off on another vacation.  Summer can't end yet!