Happy Birthday to me!
Today, I celebrated my birthday! What better way than to start documenting my travel adventures.
First, I’d like to explain my home page photo. As part of the World Domination Summit, I led a whitewater rafting trip on the White Salmon River in Washington State. It was so much fun!
The night before, I rented a 12 passenger van. This thing was a beast!
The first thing the rental car manager said was, “We are closing now. That means people are going to start coming in and dropping off their vehicles. If you’re not ready to head out just yet, you can go ahead and parallel park it on the street.”
What?? Parallel park this thing??? But I did it!
I picked everyone up in the morning and we headed off to White Salmon. When we got there, we were warned that the water was ice cold, but we will be given wetsuits. I still thought we were making a big mistake and we were all going to freeze. Oh well. No turning back now.
And I’m so glad the water temperature didn’t scare us away! This was hands down the best whitewater rafting trip I’ve ever been on. There were plenty of class IV rapids. There was a 14 foot drop that we couldn’t make. We got out of the raft, climbed up onto the bank, and hiked on slippery, uneven rocks for what seemed like miles. I was sure I was going to face plant or fall into the river. Meanwhile, the guide let our empty rafts float down the waterfall. When we finally got to the end of the hike, they told us we could either jump off of the cliff and into the water or walk down the hill and climb in. Hell yeah, I wanted to jump off of the cliff!! It did not disappoint! It was worth the ice-cold water at the bottom. When we got to the very end, we had a choice of going over a 10 foot waterfall (Class V rapids), or getting out of the raft like we did at the 14 foot drop. When they asked us what we wanted to do, without hesitation we all said “waterfall!!” in unison. They said it’s the highest waterfall you can raft over in the country, and second highest in the world! (The highest is in New Zealand, and it’s 15 ft. I’ll have to make note of that so I can find that river when I visit!)
By the time we got off the river, we were starving! We got a tip from a local about a nearby restaurant. It had a really cool outdoor deck with an amazing view of Mt. Hood! And the food was great!
We started the long journey back to Portland. But we weren’t done adventuring yet! On the way home, we stopped at Multnomah Falls. It’s a must-see! Stunning waterfall. And it’s on the way to many Columbia River Gorge hikes.
I’ve always wanted to go whitewater rafting for my birthday. But nobody is ever available because my birthday falls on Labor Day Weekend, and people usually have other plans. Well, this year I went a month early. That’s close enough for me.
Click here to see the full Whitewater Rafting Album