Alaska- Day 4

  Early in the morning we caught the shuttle back to town to go white water rafting, another spur of the moment activity. I still am so surprised that my Dave would just drop money on something he had not researched or shopped around not once but twice in two days! I'm so proud of him. Or maybe he was trying to kill me. I HATE water that I can't see the bottom. It took us about 20 minutes to drive to the drop of point and the guy that was giving us the safety talk was NOT nice. I was seriously crying by the time he was done. He pretty much told us we had a 50/50 chance of coming back, but most likely we would die. I'm so glad that when we got there he got in a different raft. Our guide was really nice and from Eastern Tennessee. He reassured me that we would be fine and off we went. The trip us 4 hours. The first 2 were really just a float, there was a man and his son with us in the boat. The rapids were class 1 and class 2 so really nothing. We got a little wet but really it was relaxing. After 2 hours we dropped off the 2 guys and Dave and I ended up being the only ones to go on. There was another boat that had 4 people in it that went ahead of us. Our guide had us sit in front, since there was only the 3 of us. We really did have a blast, I think it was one of Dave's favorites.  

   Getting ready to go. So scared and COLD. They told us the water was 36 degrees, IT WAS.

   When I was in the back the first 2 hours it wasn't that bad.

   The only picture of Dave. I wasn't letting go to take pictures. But he was there and loved every minute of it! He even wore his hat.

   This is the start of the class 3 and 4 section.

   Right before he tried to lose me in a class 4. The water was really cold.  We were wearing wet suits but they were not warm suits!

   The rapids don't look that bad, but we dropped a good 3-5 feet after the little wave into the rapid. Notice how far forward I am. They convinced me that was the only way to make sure the boat stayed stable with only 3 of us. Pretty much they just wanted to soak me, which they did.

   It got really hairy in there. We went trough this canyon here and the wind was blowing really bad. Dave took of his hat and sat on it, that's saying something. To the side of me is a class 5 rapid that the guide had to go around, he wasn't aloud to go through it. The wind was so bad it was everything he could do to steer out of it. The wind kept knocking us into the side of the canyon, I thought it might pop the raft. As soon as we got out of the steepest part of the canyon, he radioed back to the base and told them they had to cancel the rest of the rafting until the wind died down, it was just to strong.


  When we got done rafting, we were FREEZING, but we had about a 30 minute drive back to the base and then they drove us back to the cabins. We kinda thawed out in that time. We only had an hour when we got back to shower and get everything ready before the bus picked us up to go to Anchorage. Everything we did they picked us up and the cabins and dropped us of at the cabins. It was great. We thought we would have to do a taxi or something but everything was right there for us. We hurried and got ready and then rode the bus to Anchorage. It was about a 4-5 hour drive. There was only maybe 10 people on the bus and they showed a movie about Alaska. We were able to sleep, we had been going none stop. Once we got to Anchorage, while we waited for our shuttle we got some dinner and went shopping.

   I wanted this moose so bad! I think it says its about 7 thousand dollars. I made take a picture, it was so big! We headed to our hotel and got some sleep since we were so tired.