After a jam packed day on Thursday visiting Denali National Park we slept in on Friday. After a leisurely breakfast, we moseyed down to meet the river rafting bus at 11:30. It was another beautiful blue sky and sunshine awaiting for our river rafting adventure. The bus drove us to the Denali Outdoor Center. At that point, we all had to sign all our rights away on waviers, get fitted for our rubber suits, rubber shoes, life vests and helmets. Our group were divided into the Scenic Wilderness; a 2 Hour Mildwater Float and the Nenana Half Day; a 4 Hour Combination.
As we moved to another area we sat on benches to pull on these “Drysuits” which took a little bit of tugging. However, some of us were laughing so hard at each other we couldn’t make much progress without assistance. The young men working there were very helpful and joked with us.
Once we had our suits on for the most part we had our life jackets in hand and headed back on a bus for the short trip to the Nenana River. At the river, Becky gathered all the groups together for a safety talk and instruction. She briefed us on what happens if you fall into the cold, glacier fed river, how they would attempt to get you in the raft if you were able to grasp it and what they would have to do if you were too far from the raft. After listening to all these safety instructions, we were wondering if we made the right decision to embark on this experience, if it was going to be our last one! However, having just returned from Point Barrow, we said, “If we made it through that experience we can do this”.
Our rafting adventure included, Spence, Madi, Noreene, Jeff, Dee, Marvin, Ivan and Shirley. The young guide, JT, was very informative telling us about the glaciers, mountains, wild life, animals and various stories on the trip down river. The weather could not have been more beautiful and floating down the river was very tranquil until our guide decided to give us a thrill and hit some of the white water at different points. He was good at maneuvering the raft so that everyone was a victim of the icy cold water rolling over the raft. Plus, every time Marvin told him a joke he would make a turn with the oars and catch a rapid. Unfortunately, Noreene was more of a cold water victim of Marvin’s jokes than Marvin was. We were fortunate to finally land and get our “land legs” without anyone falling out of the raft or flipping it. We boarded the bus back to the Outdoor Center to wiggle out of the rubber suits and get our normal shoes back on. We were then bused back to the RV Park. On the way back some of us decided that we were hungry from this trying trip and would meet at the Salmon Bake Restaurant.
We met at the restaurant and ran into Bob, Sheryl and Monique. We invited them to join us and most of us enjoyed the special of the house …Halibut Tacos. The tacos were so large that you couldn’t get them into your mouth. We had to use a fork and knife to eat them. They were also served with rice & beans……..too much food, but delicious!
After dinner we went through some of the shops in the area to help the local economy and then had to have some ice cream because the temperatures started to soar into the 80’s.
We concluded our day by returning to our RV, turning the air conditioning on and relaxing……….until we turned on our computer to write this blog and it CRASHED. The disk drive was damaged and caused this blog article to be delayed until we purchased a new computer in Anchorage.
While we were on the river rafting trip, Gary, Sally and Jenks took a private flight over 20,300’ Mt. McKinley that turned out to be amazing. Their plane landed on the glacier of the mountain and they were able to get out and walk around the glacier. Gary said that the views looking down on the mountain and from other angles, provided a fantastic view that you don’t see from the ground. They had an exciting trip.
So we have spent our evening trying to learn a new computer and wishing we weren’t so set in our ways. But, by the time we return to San Jose we probably will be old pros on this new computer.
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