White water rafting/mountain hiking/Saturday fun-ventures

   Week three of campers was a fun one, extra fun!!!! I have a group of older girls who are here for two weeks and this past week we went white water rafting together! I have never been rafting so it was super interesting to learn about and experience. We rafted in the White Salmon River which holds year round at a fairly constant 42 degrees meaning we were most definitely wearing wet suits....super fashionable! We rafted for just about seven miles and our guide made it super duper fun. At one point he had us paddling upstream into a rapid and caused us to fill our boat with water...he called it surfing a rapid while I called it stupid fun. haha One spot along the river has a 15 foot rock formation that lends itself well to being jumped off since the water below drops off very deep. He brought us over to the edge of the river and asked if any of us wanted to jump off so myself as well as four of my campers jumped off and plunged into the chilly waters below. It was bone chilling but definitely prepared us for the rest of the trip when water would splash us as we navigated the rapids. Our guide also filled his water bottle with fresh spring water that helps fill the river and allowed us to taste the crisp natural spring water. No need for extra refrigeration of that, it was ideal on such a sunny day! We steered through class 2, 3, and 3 plus rapids but chose to walk around a 15 foot waterfall that essentially would have turned our raft completely vertical with persons inside. (Girl Scouts don't exactly find that safe.) It was super fun to experience rafting for the first time with campers and I definitely plan on signing myself up for rafting again in the future.

   We went rafting on Tuesday and when our muscles were back in "regular working order" we were ready for Thursday, or as we call it at camp, MOUNTAIN DAY! We offer three different hikes on Thursdays and I was able to do two of them during staff training. Camp is located on part of Wind Mountain and from camp it is another 1.2 miles up to the summit. That hike is almost completely incline after incline but the view was so worth it at the top. So since I had hiked to Twin Lakes and up to Wind Mountain already I signed up to hike Dog Mountain this past week. Dog is the most difficult of the three hikes we offer and is 3.8 miles to the peak. It was a great day to hike, not too hot and what we thought was not too cold....the wind surprised us at the top and was totally chilly and brutal but we dealt. The elevation of Dog Mountain is about 3000 feet and is significantly taller than Wind Mountain so we could clearly see Wind Mountain from the summit of Dog. All in all, the trip took us about seven hours round trip because campers move at sloth speeds, and below are some photos from the top. It is Sunday and my calves still hurt from the trek!

    Since my campers are here for a two week trip we were able to go on a Saturday adventure together with some other campers that came to visit from another Oregon camp. It was over 90 degrees so we spent most of our time viewing different scenic spots from the van. Would you believe that we saw zebras and giraffes and buffalo in a remote part of Washington?! Well, we did! A little private farm is home to a host of exotic animals and it is open to the public to drive through for funzies. We also saw a fish hatchery that had been used by Native Americans, a dam that Benjamin Bonneville helped start along the path that Louis and Clark took of the area, and drove along a historic scenic byway that passes countless popular waterfalls and trails. And perhaps the best part, a trip to a local ice cream place to finish out our adventure and cool us down.