Yes, it was love at first splash! I never thought I'd enjoy white water rafting , and apparently neither did the dh. The rafting trip was booked almost as an afterthought since we had precious little to do in the middle of the mountains amidst the swarming millions who descended there in an alarming array of kitschy presence. But of course , I should have known that the title of "most visited national park in the USA" does not come easy to an NP in the land of hummer-SUV-RV crazy townsfolk.
White water rafting engages your senses in a pretty strong way . It starts off with the gurgle of the shallow stream turning into a gush of a small river as the gates of the dam are raised to let the water flow , then you see it swirl in countless eddies and raise leafy ,weedy green gunk that flows downstream , then the damp, boggy and floral smells waft by you and as the guide assures you that the place is safer than the 20 mile stretch of interstate by which one travels to reach the river, you actually begin to hear the call of the water.
To say that we were armed to the teeth would be an understatement. There was the life jacket of course, then the helmet , the awesome aqua shoes ,and of course the paddles. We were the plastic vikings at sea!
As our fluffy raft drifted downstream ,the morning's faint drizzle gave way to a toasty sunshine. We were lazily paddling about and listening to our guide tell us about her life as an oregon teenager when we met 'cascada uno' - it was a small one and couldn't be felt beyond a tiny lurch and some splashing on the portside. Since dh was leading the pack on the left , he got the full benefit of the punch. And then it began.
Within moments , we were whirled,twirled,twisted,hurtled in a dizzying display of foamy spelndour. I could almost feel my heart drop through my body and meet my intestines. The water came in waves, thick and fast and we paddled furiously. Then within the flick of a wary eye, something strange happened.... the raft wobbled and lurched to the right. El Capitan was waterborne!
Fighting my rising panic (and nausea) i slid to the center to balance the raft and started calculating the odds of a person hitting the water both times on his two rafting trips. Naah , my ideas of assuming the damsel in distress stance to get rescued by my hero wasn't worth the neuron it emerged from... As we guided our vessel and hitched it to the overlying branches , i could see my knight in shining... ahem, soggy armour valiantly battling the breakers while other kind souls flung their paddles to drag him in. And so it was, that the dh became the first to demonstrate the invincible unsinkability of our sorry gear.