Jackson Hole: Snake River Rafting

If you think they don't get a lot of snow here, look at the pole they use to locate transformers in the winter... Dianne is over 6 feet tall, so I guess they are planning for up to 8 feet of snow. Yikes! Glad we came in August!



We went downtown to see the town square after breakfast and putting bikes together. Pretty cool... the square is marked on 4 corners by arches built of the previous winter's elk antlers. They are picked up from the local elk refuge by boy scouts and made into the arches and then the previous year's arches are auctioned off. We saw the famous Cowboy Bar but it was not open yet, and I went to a bunch of stores looking for something for Adam with an elk on it--no luck on that score.



We came back and changed clothes and were picked up by the Jackson Hole Whitewater Rafting people at 12:15. We had booked a combination tour--first an easy river float with lunch, and later whitewater rafting, all on the Snake River. The float trip was great fun... we had the three of us, Laurie, her daughter Joey and Andy, and a last minute addition of Nora and Janelle, whose car had broken down placing them in easy range of our trip. Kyle was our guide.

We saw lovely views of the Grand Tetons, lots of bald eagles and ospreys, beaver dams but no beavers. We saw Harrison Ford's river front acreage, but no Harrison Ford.

In the afternoon we had a real blast on the whitewater rafting portion of the trip. Not a lot of photo opportunities; in fact they recommended we not bring cameras unless they were waterproof. I brought mine anyway but left it in its waterproof bag most of the time. We had a stretch of calm water enough for me to get the camera out for a few shots, one of our guide "Uncle Tom" and one he took of us. We got drenched on this trip, but it was pretty warm out and we were working hard enough paddling that we were OK. After the trip we had dinner at their boat house... the end to another fully packed day.