Whitewater Rafting on the American River

On Saturday the Joint Youth Group went down the American River on a whitewater rafting trip.  This was our annual fall adventure day trip.  The past two years we had gone on a ropes course challenge up in the foothills of the Sierras.  This year we wanted to try something different.  Wow!  What a great day.  We gathered in the DLC church parking lot at 6:45am to head for the American river.  We prayed as the sun came up for a safe and exciting day, also remembering the victims and people whose lives were changed by the water of hurricane Ike.  

We climbed into our rafts with our new best friends, our guides Meg and Alex, and headed down the river.  Playing a trust game where we interlocked oars, stood up on the edge of the raft and leaned back, found Eric in the river for the first time.  The cold water found him back in the

 raft as quickly as he went in.

The first part of the trip was fairly calm with a few class II rapids, but nothing to write home about, ....yet.  Most of the time the water fights, between the rafts kept us laughing.  We pulled our rafts ashore for lunch, dined on sandwiches, bug juice and cookies and head down stream for the afternoon.  

Oh my!  What an amazing afternoon.  The pace quickened and the whitewater got more dramatic as we plunged through class III rapids called Hospital/Bar, Satan's Cistern, and Surprise.  At Surprise our guide Alex told us just as we entered that this set of rapids can lift the back of the raft forward and push the guide into the middle of the boat.  It did more than that, it knocked him out of the boat, and took Matt with him!

We spent six hours on the river that day.  We got to know each other a whole lot better.  Learned who doesn't like bees, (Summer), who screams the loudest, (Jessica), who fell in the most, (Eric) and who stayed in the boat all the way, (Pr Jeff!)