North Santiam River

Today we all went rafting down the North Santiam River from Packsaddle park to Mill City just like we did last fall around the same time. This time we took a 6 person inflatable raft though with my roomate Jason Killian and Kristen Splinter as our guides. In the boat were Brendan, Eleanor, Kristen, her sister, Jason, and I. In Kayaks with us were Chris Gabrielli, Cheney Vidrine, Abby? (forget her name), and Toshi the white-water samurai shredder. It was a really fun time and we even got to eat pancakes at Kristen's house before we left with my truck, Gabrielli's Tacoma, and Kristen's new xB. The trip took us about 4 hours or so and we even stopped at a big rapid to jump into the whitewater upon Chris' suggestion. According to Hodak I was "stupid" enough to pull a backflip into the rapids off the rocks. ha! The only one who didn't jump was Toshi. Hodak and I especially had a great time fooling around in the boat the whole way probably to the annoyance of Jason who couldn't for his life control my paddling pattern (the river wasn't serious enough to really be too concerned). Highlights included seeing several Merganzer ducks (to which Eleanor was greatly amused) tons of Geese, many Salmon on the "verge of death and rotting" according to Jason, many fish bones, soggy PB&J sandwiches and frito's, me falling out of the raft every 30 minutes and many laughs. Can't wait to go boating again... and I think we finally fired up Jason to get out with us more hopefully... we'll see. Afterwards we went over to Kristen's for some of her amazing chilli, but afterwards I was so full of chilli and corn bread that I started to fall asleep so I cam home to write this up quick before a nap. Click the title for a slideshow as always.