Whitewater Rafting

Payette River - 2004

The middle squares of my t-shirt quilt are from whitewater rafting companies.  I first went rafting the week before final exams my senior year in college on the Lower Gauley River in West Virginia.  The remnants of a hurricane came through the week before and the water was running high.  I figured if I was going to die, I might as well do it before I had to take my finals.   It was a blast, and after that, I was hooked.

On our honeymoon, we had been going for a week straight when we got to Moab, Utah and we were beat.  We decided to spend a day and floated down the Colorado (which is actually pretty tame there).

When my daughters got older, I introduced the oldest two to rafting in the middle fork of the Flathead River in Montana.  A couple of years later, the whole family rafted down the Arkansas river in Colorado.  Gail spent the entire trip hanging onto the 8-year old Deanne, who would have fallen out multiple times otherwise.  We rafted the Payette River in Idaho, the Nooksack in Washington, but the most adventurous was a midnight raft trip down the Manatuska River in Alaska in July.  We had dry suits for that one, since the river begins from a glacier.

For our 30th Anniversary, we had a float trip down the Merced River in Yosemite, and a few years later, we channeled our inner Burt Reynolds by rafting the Chattooga River in Georgia, the filming site of Deliverance.

The white t-shirt on the quilt says it all. 

 It was once believed that the Earth was flat.  

And if you went too far you'd fall off the edge. 

  Cool! 

20th Anniversary

When we got married in 1984, our honeymoon consisted of driving Gail's car from California where she worked to St. Louis where we were going to live.  We started the honeymoon in San Francisco, staying at the Chancellor Hotel on Union Square.  We did the normal tourist stuff, and after a couple of days, we got in the car and started driving across America.  (stories for future posts)

20 years later, we were living in Seattle and I wanted to do something special for our Anniversary.  We planned on taking a camping trip that weekend to celebrate.  At least, that's what she thought.

Unbeknownst to her, I had gotten a couple of tickets to San Francisco and reservations at the same hotel we honeymooned at, and left this letter on the bed in the morning. 

I’m sorry to break it to you, but we will not be going camping this weekend like we planned.  It was all a ruse to keep you from scheduling anything else.  What we are doing is still a surprise, but I’ll fill you in on some of the details. 

• The kids aren’t coming,
• We’ll be heading to the airport in the afternoon,
• We’ll be returning on Sunday afternoon. 

Susie will be staying with the kids, and she’ll be coming around 1pm to get the briefing.  What I’d like for you to do is the following:

• Pack a suitcase with clothes for a temperate climate.  You’ll need 4 outfits, three casual, and one a little dressier. 
• Pack a camera, jacket, and a day bag (purse, fanny pack, or whatever you wish) and whatever else you think you may need for a weekend away,
• Call Jackie and tell her that she won’t be dog sitting after all,
• Call the neighbors and tell them we won’t be golfing with them,
• Call the Airline and tell them that Susie will be dropping off Deanne,
• Sign the attached form,
• Think of what instructions to tell Susie when she get to our house. 

I’ll be home about the same time as Susie, so if there are other things we have to go over, we can do it then. 

Happy Anniversary  

Needless to say, we had a good weekend.  Even got artwork to furnish the house, but again, that's another story.