So one super cool event that I left out of the “life lately” posts a couple weeks ago was our river float. It’s something I had never done before and felt like it deserved its own post.
Right after Rascal Flatts we headed home and packed up Marcus’ truck with everything we’d need for the float/weekend and hit the road to Vegas.
I think we made it in about 4.5 longggggg hours.
We hit up the grocery store at 5:30 am and stocked up on our lunches and drinks we’d be taking on the hike/float.
It was probably 6:00 am by the time we finished and made it to Marcus’ friends place. We took about an hour or so to pack everything in backpacks, cake on the sunscreen, and head over to another house to meet everyone that was going on this float. There were probably about 15 of us and we headed out to the Colorado river near the Hoover Dam.
Once we got there, we unloaded the backpacks full of floats, booze, food, water, and climbing gear our of the cars and headed off on our [3-ish hour] hike to the river. It was super intense and but kind of a lot of fun repelling down rocks, jumping over little streams. It wasn’t too difficult until we hit like the last 1/3 where the drops off the rocks were bigger and we has lost traction in our shoes from the streams we didn’t make it over. I think at one point I hit my head on a rock because it hurt for most of the float. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of this hike because I left my phone behind. I didn’t want to risk losing it or dropping it in the water. Just trust me when I tell you it was fun. I actually think I liked that part more than I did the float.
Once we got to the bottom of the canyon we had hiked, we took a little break and began to inflate our floats. After like an hour of that we were ready to hit the river…or so we thought. Apparently it’s common knowledge that the water is FREEZING. Sitting in that for 4 hours was not pleasant. We all tied our floats to each other and began floating down the river…except we had some assistance and were pulled by a boat who was occupied by a couple in our group who chose to fish instead of float. Smart. We kind of just chilled in the floats…tried to fall asleep because I was exhausted but couldn’t. There were a couple of exciting moments when Caroline had to jump in the water after we lost our beach ball and camera, but it was mostly floating. There was one wake that caused Marcus’ float to pop and he couldn’t party anymore so he had to jump on the boat. About an hour and a half later, I kind of got over the cold water and floating so I gave up my spot to Marcus and chose to be in the boat for the rest of the ride back.
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| The boat pulling us! |
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| Lime getting back into her float after getting the beach ball! |
My swap with Marcus was perfect timing because the
boat was due by 4:00 and at 3:00 the float still had about 5 mile markers left to
travel at a rate of 2 MPH, lol. We pulled them for another 30 minutes and let go at 3:30 which was when they were SOL. The floaters had to paddle in using oars,
arms, and feet…all while being a little boozed up. Haha. As much as I would
have loved to see that, I’m glad I wasn’t there. Once they got in earshot of those of us on land, we could hear them and Marcus' singing even though they were still like a quarter mile away.
We finished up the float at like
6:00, headed home, ate some grub, and passed out.
It was a super cool thing to do, and
I’m excited for next year! BUT I might choose to bring a jetski [anyone have one?!!] and pull the float
instead of being stuck on it.