Thursday was the day on which my whitewater rafting adventure on the Yellowstone River (which I’d booked way back in March or April, when I was initially planning this trip) was to happen. Woo-hoo!
This meant that I had to get myself to the Wild West Rafting Company in Gardiner, MT by 9:30 am. (Incidentally, the rafting trip would take place entirely on a stretch of the river just outside the park boundaries; no rafting is permitted on the river within the park.) Again, for anyone not familiar with the area: Gardiner is located immediately outside the park’s north entrance…so if one happened to be, say, in the Mammoth area of the park, it would only take about five or ten minutes to get there; but for me, starting from my campsite at bridge bay, I estimated that it would be closer to two hours. To be on the safe side (since you never know when you might be delayed by buffalo, etc.), I made sure I was up, dressed, and on the road by about quarter to seven.
Sure enough, I did encounter another buffalo-related delay while passing through the Hayden Valley this morning—though at this hour, the traffic was relatively light, so the delay was correspondingly shorter than the one that I’d experienced in the early afternoon the previous day.
Since I’d left myself so much time, I ended up getting to Mammoth at about 8:30—so I decided to stop and eat something before continuing out of the park and into Gardiner. (I’d eaten a bagel in the car, but I wanted a little more food to get me through the morning of rafting to come, and the rest of my breakfast was too messy to try to eat while driving.) When I went into the Mammoth visitor center after eating to wash my hands, I noticed signs saying that free wifi was available there (Mammoth is the most “developed” part of the park)—so I whipped out my phone and took a moment to download all the emails that had accumulated since I’d lost cellular service on Saturday. There were 158 of them (almost all junk), so I didn’t have time to look at them all—but I did see one or two of moderate interest. Wanting to be sure that I would have enough time to find the rafting place, though, I didn’t linger too long in Mammoth.
I got to Gardiner, found the rafting place, checked in and so on, and then had about twenty minutes of standing around waiting for everyone who was going on the rafting adventure to arrive and get ready. I listened to some of the rafting guides—four screwball dudes in their mid-twenties—dorking around, and chatted just a little bit with some of the other people (there was a family from Duluth!). Eventually everyone was ready and organized, and we were loaded up into a bus for the short drive to the raft put-in site. On the bus, the guides (the four dudes I mentioned earlier, plus one young woman) indulged in various goofy joking shenanigans that one of them later admitted were more for their own sake than for that of the customers. They also made a big show of their rivalry with another rafting company in town, making fun of its ridiculous name (“Flying Pig”) and encouraging customers to make snout-faces and oink out the windows of the bus as we rode past it.
I think there were a total of five rafts (makes sense, I guess, since I also remember five raft guides). We were divided up among them (many people were only doing the half-day trip; only two of the rafts were filled with full-day rafters like myself), given life jackets and paddles and a safety/instructions speech, and photographed—and then it was time to get in the water! In the moments immediately prior to climbing into the raft, I was super-excited!
The other people in my raft were a set of grandparents on a vacation with their two young grandchildren. They were from the San Diego area. The pattern of the rafting excursion (especially in the early part of the day) was that you would go over some rapids (paddling to help the raft punch through them, getting soaked by waves, and anchoring yourself with your feet so as not to get thrown out of the raft)…and then there would be a calm section, during which we would just relax and talk or listen to the guide with his stories and points of interest…and then more rapids. Etc. (Everyone always wants to know what category/class the rapids were, and I usually have to answer that since the numbers didn’t really mean anything to me, they didn’t stick in my head, so I don’t know. But, I actually looked it up just now, and the answer is: class II & III.)
So, yeah, this was pretty fun. 🙂 When we weren’t plowing through waves going over the rapids, we were taking in the gorgeous scenery. The water was cold, but not so cold that I didn’t want to get wet—which was just perfect. Incidentally, my plan for after the rafting adventure was to check out the “Boiling River” back in the park (it’s located between the north entrance and Mammoth—so very nearby, and on my way back). I had learned about Boiling River from a faculty member at work just before my last trip to Yellowstone, two years ago, but it had turned out to be closed when we were there (early in the summer, high water levels, etc.), so I hadn’t gotten to experience it. It’s a spot where hot springs flow into the Gardiner River, and rocks have been arranged in the river in such a way as to essentially create a hot tub; the very hot water from the spring mixes with the cold river water to produce (if you sit in just the right spot) perfect jacuzzi temperatures. Anyway, I bring this up now because it soon emerged that I would not be the only person from our rafting expedition heading to this natural(-ish) hot tub later in the day! When the couple in the raft that I was in asked both me and the guide if we knew of any good trails to take their young grandkids on in the park, I had to ask them if they were aware of the Boiling River (it was relevant since you do hike a short trail from the parking area to reach it), and the guide chimed in to say that they often recommend it to their customers. Sure enough, a bit later on as we were passing one of the other rafts, we heard the guide on that raft telling his passengers about the Boiling River as well. Enthusiastic talk about the wild party that we were all allegedly going to have there later on ensued sporadically throughout the rest of the rafting trip.
Meanwhile, here are a bunch more rafting pictures:
On certain stretches of the river, where it was calm and fairly deep, the guide told us that we could jump overboard and swim along with the raft for a while if we wished to. So, naturally, I did so. That was pretty fun! The water felt cold upon initially being totally immersed in it, but I adjusted to it quickly (though warming up again once I was back on the raft afterwards took longer!). The current was pretty strong, and between that and the life jacket, all I had to do was relax in the water and float along; the only concern was not getting too far ahead of the raft (being smaller and lighter, individual swimmers tended to float along faster than the raft itself). I jumped in a total of three times, and the third time was the best: it was in a nice long calm section that we traversed after lunch (the guides called it “digestion waters,” or something to that effect), so I was able to just relax, lie back, and float effortlessly down the Yellowstone, gazing at the mountain skyline, without a care in the world. Vacation! (And let me just say for the record that this experience officially and completely made up for all the times during both of my previous visits to Yellowstone when various circumstances had prevented me from being able to have water-related fun out there.) 🙂
It seemed like we’d barely even begun to raft when we got to the spot where the trip ended for the half-day folks, so I was really, really glad that I’d sprung for the full day trip. While they were getting out of the river, we just beached momentarily so that our guide could grab the coolers full of lunch that were waiting at the take-out, for a bit later on. Come lunchtime, we all disembarked on “lunch island” and dug into our sandwiches, chips, cookies, and (for those so inclined) watermelon and potato salad (ew). Sitting in the sun and eating, I dried off almost completely. Then it was back into the rafts and onward! I already mentioned “digestion waters”; further on, near the end of the route, came “Yankee Jim Canyon”—the most adventurous section with the biggest waves, which the guides had been talking up all day. Honestly, while it was super-fun, I didn’t really notice a big difference between these rapids and any of the previous rapids, other than that these were in an especially scenic stretch of river (which is saying something!). The rocky canyon walls were cool. The guide also talked quite a bit (not just here, but throughout the day) about how different the rafting experience is at different times of year; the water level on the river is highest when the season first opens in May and then gradually drops over the course of the summer, until the end of the season (in September, I think) when it’s really low. So, some of the exciting rapids that we went through would have been calm sections early in the season when the rocks causing the rapids would have been submerged under more water…but some of the big exposed rocks that we steered around would have been just beneath the surface, producing other exciting rapids to adventure through. It seemed to me like this would make being a rafting guide very challenging; it’s not like you can just “learn the river” once and then be an expert, because the river is constantly changing!
In the van on the way from the take-out spot at the end of the trip back to the rafting company’s headquarters in town, the guides told us about some of the…”interesting” questions and reactions that some of their past customers had voiced. Apparently some people are surprised by the fact that the rafting trip doesn’t end at the same spot where it begins! One guy had even once asked one of the guides, while on the river, if they were “on a loop”—and another had wanted to know if the raft was on some kind of underwater “tracks.” I guess I’m just going to assume that some of these folks lived in a desert somewhere, and were not familiar with the concept of a river.
As planned, I headed straight for the Boiling River after the rafting fun was over. Not surprisingly, the area was jam-packed with people—not just in the “hot tub,” but spread out in the river along much of the trail leading up to the actual spot. Actually, I think there was more than one hot-tub-like spot, but I only checked out one of them. Also, incidentally, there were elk hanging around all over the place there. Since I was going for a swim/soak, I had left my camera in the car, so there are no pictures of the Boiling River or the elk or anything else from here. However, it was quite nice (crowded or not), and I would say more than lived up to my expectations. (I did, by the way, spot and exchange greetings with one group of people who had been on the rafting trip, though it wasn’t the family with whom I’d shared a raft.) The river water itself was very cold, but where the very hot water mixed in with it, it did feel a lot like a hot tub (although every so often a current of either too-hot or really-cold water would hit some part of me). It was very relaxing, and I honestly felt like I could have just sat there for hours and enjoyed it—even though it was already early evening, and I had that long drive ahead of me to get back to my campsite, so I knew that it was going to be a late supper night. Strangers were chatting in a friendly way while relaxing and soaking, and it was just really nice. (There was one woman who, with her family, was staying at the same campground as me, and who was experiencing the same dilemma of feeling like sitting here for a good while but dreading the long drive ahead.)
When I did eventually drag myself out of the river and head back to the car, I was in a really good mood despite the day’s fun being over and the long drive and late supper that I was facing. I rolled down my car window and air-dried in the warm breeze coming in as I drove, snacking on potato chips and feeling utterly at peace with the world. And sure, it was frustrating when I got to the Hayden Valley and traffic once again ground to a halt, and I had to spend about an hour moving through the area at a crawl—especially when I could see around the bend off in the distance to where the front of the line of stopped cars was, and realized that the hold-up was not due to any buffalo actually blocking the road (none were), but just to moronic drivers who were stopping in the traffic lane to gawk at and take pictures of the majestic critters—but whatever, right? (I totally get wanting to pause and admire the buffalo, since I myself think they’re super-cool and can never get enough of them…but there are tons of pull-out spots along the road for people who want to do that!!! You don’t hold up traffic to do your sight-seeing, you morons!)
Okay, so admittedly, my mood had soured a bit by the time I got through the traffic jam. But I got through the last stretch of road between me and the campsite (definitely getting back the latest of any day of the trip), threw together a fire and roasted up some brats, and pretty much called it a day (skipping the ranger program again due to my late return and needing time both for supper and for planning out my final day in the park). And what a day it had been!