Jackson- Part 3

Our actual trip to Jackson was a lot of fun. On the first day we went up with my family and everybody did Alpine Canyon. It was fun to do the river with Rachel. It is also crazy to me that now, after we have known each other for over seven years, this is still the only river we have been on together. It really goes to show how much my life has changed.

This is the only river so far that I have been on, but we have many plans to do family rivers together in the future.  Running rivers will definitely be a part of the Hazard family.  I think that we will all have many river memories together.

After the river my family went home and we went to a campground near the Gros Ventre river. Unfortunately, like so many other things, my memories of this trip are sort of fragmented. Here are some things I remember:

·         Rachel fell out of the raft during Lunch Counter (But I did not let go of my paddle!)

·         At some point after the swim she agreed to jump in an inner tube for a few of the rapids. I was glad she was not scared of the water after swimming in a rapid for the first time. Many people are.  (I was not afraid of the rapids, but maybe I should have been afraid of the shallow water and the rocky river bottom).

·         Pitching the tent was a big deal. I don’t think Rachel or her sisters had ever pitched a tent by themselves before this moment. I got mine up quickly and then went to help. (We have been camping many times at Lake Powell, but we struggled to get this tent up).

·         Rachel and I were in the middle of reading The Da Vinci Code out loud to one another. Every morning we would get up before anybody else and go down to the river to read. This is really what started our tradition of reading books together. We have since read over 50 titles.

·         We went rock climbing at the Hoback Shield. By this point Rachel was very into climbing. I set up an easy climb, but was a little bit disappointed at her sisters. Shannon was deathly afraid of heights and Marissa was more interested in playing acrobat on the rope than in climbing the rock. I guess these things are okay, but it made me glad that Rachel was able to take rock climbing a little bit more seriously since it was one of the things that I truly enjoyed doing.

·         After rock climbing we went down to the Hoback River to cool off.

·         One of the nights Rachel and I left her sisters at camp and went into Jackson Hole for a date. We saw a play called “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.”