Bing Goes Rafting....

.....as a final hurrah before Jessica and I head to Mexico.

Bing came out to the northwest a week before we took off to Mexico.
It was a whirl-wind trip of rafting on the White Salmon River and a three day raft trip on the Rogue River, one of the first designated wild and scenic rivers in the country and a mighty beautiful river trip as well.
Our adventures on the Rogue had many highlights. It was just the three of us, my dad, Jessica and me. We ran the middle chute at Rainy falls and I proceeded to bang Bing's head with an oar. Later on in the day we high-sided on a rock in Wildcat rapid. We had to get out on the rock and we were lucky enough to get off the rock pretty easy, but it was looking grim there for a few minutes.


The first camp was pretty chill, here is a pic (if you click on it it gets bigger) The Second day on the river was pretty relaxing for the most part until we got to Mule Creek Canyon. We survived the Coffee Pot and then we came to Blossom Bar, the biggest rapid of the trip. Bing and I first went off to scout the rapid. I was going to give him a lesson in scouting, when we heard a yell for help from Jess, who was by the raft. I thought she had let go of the raft or accidentally started floating downstream towards the rapid. But in fact it was none of that. She was screaming because there was a bear on the far shore. Bing went to her rescue and that would not be the last time before the day was done. I went and scouted. We ran the rapid. It went fairly well except for while I was trying to make the crux move at the top of the rapid the oar popped out of place. Luckily Jess and Bing had paddles and they were able to help get the raft were it needed to be.

We saw another bear shortly after that on the shore and had one more encounter that evening where a bear came into our camp. Bing came to Jess's rescue one more time by holding his camp chair above his head and screaming like a mad man. It was awesome to see that; really I did not see the bear that well, but my dad, now that was priceless.



After our encounter with said bear, Bing quickly moved his tent close to Jess and mine's and away from the kitchen area. We put our food inside the bear fence which to our dismay was not working, but maybe it would be enough to deter the bear form trying to get our food. Here is a pic of Bing testing the bear fence with his tongue, okay maybe he wasn't testing but rather proving the point that it was not working.




The last day of our Rogue Adventure was beautiful yet challenging due to the amount of slow moving water and a lot of wind.We finally made it Foster Bar which is the take out for the Wild and Scenic section of the Rogue. Packed up our gear and headed home which was about an eight hour ride back to Portland.

The trip was great, having my dad here was great. He got to see a lot of river in his one week visit. Jess and him got along great too, and he was able to teach her all about the stars and constellations. He even hooked her up with a star chart from the late sixties. Really the stars haven't changed much since then. Well, I will close out this post with some random photos of our trip on the river. Hope you enjoy.

Jess and I are heading out on Oct 7th for our Mexico Trip, the reason I started this blog in the first place. Two months south of the border; cross your fingers to not catching swine flu (or at least not getting a bad case of it), and learning lots of Spanish!

Until the next post.