Surfing the rapids of the Rio Grande or Whitewater Rafting Near Taos New Mexico

Monday, June 21st we headed to Taos New Mexico. We were scheduled to go on a rafting trip the next day. We stayed in a little RV park just outside of Taos that had a little creek running through it. There isn't usually much to report on travel days except: we took the trailer down, we drove, we put the trailer up, got situated, ate dinner, maybe played a board game, read a chapter from Warriors to Colin and went to bed. Yeehaa, we are exciting folks!!

Tuesday was a bit more exciting! We went whitewater rafting on the Lower Gorge which is part of the Rio Grande before it gets very Grande. It's beautiful, rocky country. There were 7 of us on the trip including us, and a great young guide named Colby. We went about 11 miles on the river in all. The first part was quite calm, and we enjoyed the scenery and the company. Colby taught us a few paddling maneuvers and we rode a few class 2 rapids. On the first real rapid, Colin squealed with delight and said, " This is what I wanted!!" It was so fun to watch Colin on his first rafting experience! He was the left front paddler and Derek was the right front, with Marcus behind Colin, and me behind Derek. Colin and Derek were to lead the rhythm for the strokes, which was great as long as the water was fairly calm, but as soon as it got more interesting, Colin would forget all about paddling and go back to squealing with glee.

About halfway through, we stopped for lunch and then climbed back aboard for the class 3 rapids. We ran what was called the racecourse. At one point Colby suggested that Colin go on the very front of the raft and dangle his feet over the front as he held on while we went over a big rapid. The rapid was quite big and as the force of the water hit Colin full face on, he was thrown back into the boat with his feet in the air, snot streams from both nostrils and a huge grin on his face. It was so funny to see we all laughed for quite a while. A bit later, we went down another fairly big rapid, and Colby turned us around and had us paddle hard so we could "surf" the rapid. We paddled with all our might, and had started surfing the rapid for a few seconds, when the raft tipped and poured out both Colin and Marcus. Apparently, they both came up under the raft, but managed to get out from under it quite easily and floated together downstream a bit. Marcus managed to keep Colin safe and happy, while keeping track of both their paddles as well. Again, Colin thought that was totally awesome! Our rafting adventure ended about 2:30. We treated ourselves to ice cream and headed to the historic Pueblo. The boys weren't very interested, it was almost closing time, and it was not cheap, so we did not actually go through it. I am kind of disappointed about that.

We had a pretty good day, but it ended with a fair amount of sniping and bickering between the boys, which kind of put an unpleasant spin on the day. We're working on that!