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These are scanned photos of our 5 day rafting trip down the Rogue River in Oregon. Our friends Barry and Ann planned and organized the trip. Barry was still working for Raleigh Bicycles and Steve was working for Cycles Peugeot. Ana had recently started a job at Lomac and was asking if anyone there wanted to join in on the trip. There was one Lomac employee that had just started there that talked about it with her husband. They decided to drive out to our house in Boulder Creek to discuss it more and agreed to go on the trip. Mike and Kim have been some our very best friends since that first meeting.
We decided to take an extra week's vacation and travel with Mike and Kim up through California the week before the rafting trip. We started driving up Hwy 101 through the Avenue of the Giant Redwoods.
We spent a night camping on the Russian River. Good thing we had the Landcruiser to pull the Honda out of the riverbed. Mike and I enjoyed some fishing here and I managed to hook a really nice brown trout. I think Mike is still jealous.
Heading north, we drove up through Eureka/Arcata area and then headed east. We camped out at Whiskeytown Lake. A really beautiful drive following the Trinity River.
Our next stop was Burney Falls up in the foothills of the Sierras. Very interesting river. Up above the falls you follow the river upstream. The river gets smaller and smaller until it completely disappears. Go another mile of so and the river starts re-appearing. That one stretch flows completely underground for at least part of the year.
From Burney Falls we head over to Lake Shasta. It's not a very long drive, about 60 miles or so as I recall. During this drive we saw more deer on the side of the road having been hit by cars then anywhere we have ever driven. There would have been one more if Ana hadn't asked if I saw a doe running full speed across a meadow headed for the road. She never slowed down as she ran across the road and we would probably had collided if Ana hadn't said anything. On Shasta we decided to rent a patio boat for the day. Loads of fun! We also took a boat across to the Shasta Caverns. Side note: the hurricanes at Lum's Restaurant in Redding really pack a punch, good thing we walked from our motel.
We arrived in Grants Pass and met up with the rafting group and parked the cars. We ended up have 3 paddle boats and an oar boat. Time now to inflate the rafts, get a few lessons and off we go.
Our first test of our new skills came at Rainey Falls. Apparently these falls are now closed and rafters have to portage their rafts around them now. They looked pretty interesting at the time as one set of falls dropped into a hole and then another set of falls entered into the rapids run. Maybe we should have honed our paddling skills a bit more. Mike and Steve sat in the front of the raft to get the full experience of shooting the rapids. Kim and Ana sat in the middle and Sally guided the raft. Suddenly Sally shouted, "We're going down the falls backwards!" Unfortunately, rafts don't have a rake to the stern like they do in the bow. This means less lift so as the stern went over the falls and into the pool between the falls it kind of stuck for a bit. Mike and Steve looked down at Kim and Ana as the raft stood up vertically on it's tail. Kim and Ana had that "what have we gotten ourselves into" look as their eyes met. The raft stood there for a few minutes, or so it seemed, before the stern finally was pushed over towards the next set of falls and off we rushed down the rapids. FUN!
As we found out later, this was the most challenging part of the trip but there were plenty of thrills to come.
Not all the river is rapids. We had many stretches when we could jump in and float along with the raft.
This is a wilderness area and no motorized vehicles are allowed for most of the way. We enjoyed camping along the river. Each morning we would clean up any signs of our campsite leaving only footprints.
We would raft for a bit each morning and then stop for lunch. Then off for a bit more rafting every afternoon.
We visited Zane Grey's cabins.
As we neared the end of our trip, we started seeing the jet boats bringing tourists upriver.
After 5 days on the Rogue it was time to deflate the rafts and head for home. What a great vacation!!
