Boating the Bear

Normally you don't see people wet wading in the Bear River in April...
...wait..what does he have in his hands??
Can you tell yet?

Here's a clue

We took our drift boat out on Saturday. We boated a section of the Bear River here in the Preston area. We each rowed and fished, taking turns. We had a really great time and the weather was gorgeous for being outside.

Here's the story on why Will had to wet wade. While I was rowing, we got stuck on a rock and the oar got away from me and started floating down the river. Without hesitation Will jumped out of the boat and started running after it downstream. He caught up with it and luckily I was stuck on a rock so I wasn't moving and he could walk back to where I was with the boat. I thought it was a good photo opportunity. From the way he was walking it looked like he had hurt himself pretty badly, but after he returned and asking him, he said that the water was so cold that it hurt to walk. That is, before the numbing took effect. I'm grateful that he was able to retrieve it, as we would have probably died with only one oar.

The float trip was very fun, but a little bit scary in a couple of spots. Like here, for example:
Nobody told us there was this diversion towards the end of our float. It's never a good sign when you hear a water moving very fast and turbulent and you can't see past it. We rowed over to the bank and got out of the boat and scoped it out before deciding what to do. We decided that we could try and go over the side of the diversion that didn't look quite as bad. We both felt good about that and individually had said little prayers that we would be safe. And we made it okay.

Q. What did we learn from this trip? A. Prayers are definitely answered.

We were reminded again of this when during church Will asked me if I had put the fly rod in the case yesterday. Well, I hadn't and he hadn't, so we decided that the fly rod was still on the bank of the river where I had set it before taking the boat out of the river. This afternoon we drove up again to said spot and found the fly rod right where we had left it. Blessings!

We learned a lot about boating and I learned a lot about rowing. It definitely takes some skill and learning which direction to row and how to avoid obstacles. I'm still learning. We had a great time, aside from the adrenaline rush of going down the falls.

Anybody want to go with us next time?