Rogue Rafting Trip - 1

Here are some photos from our Rogue River rafting trip. More commentary and a video will follow soon but I wanted to get the photos online quickly so that the participants can view them. The first 2 photos are of our Almeda camp where we camped Thursday night and the second 2 photos are of our sandy campsite on Friday night after our first full day of floating. I think we went about 14 miles this day ... not sure exactly where we were ... maybe someone can leave a comment to clarify this. (Click the photos to enlarge)

En-route to Almeda on Thursday, where we had a yurt reserved, Sally & I stopped at Lu and Wally's home near Grants Pass to visit & swim. The temperature there was in the 90's. We then hooked up with John, Ginger, Candace and Jacob and spent the night at Almeda. John, Ginger and Jacob used the Yurt and the rest of us camped outside the Yurt. Candace had chosen to sleep under the stars on some nice green grass . Later that night she found out why that grass was so nice and green as the sprinklers forced her to beat a hasty retreat to a less green area.
The next day we inflated the 2 rafts and the kayak, loaded up all the gear on the rafts and off we were for our first day of floating. Sally was in the inflatable kayak (i.k.), John, Ginger and Jacob were in the large raft, and Candace and I were in the small raft. I would dub this first day as 'the education of Bill day' as I learned (almost) how to row a raft. I sort of got the idea but my dyslexia and hearing deficiency usually made me hit the obstacles I was supposed to avoid - especially when the action got fast. The weather was hot and the river was cool so it didn't take me long to hit the water ... it was wonderfully refreshing to float the calmer sections of the Rogue in the water with the beautiful scenery floating by. On this upper part of the river, it was surprising how little raft traffic there was ... though there was one large contingent of about 20 kayakers and a few large support rafts. As it turned out, we had gotten a late start and also started farther upriver than most so we floated until the sun was getting low and finally picked a spit of sand on the side of the river to camp since most of the best sites were already taken. We had no mishaps this day (unless you consider me running into every large boulder in sight a mishap) but we were really pooped because the wind really picks up in the afternoon and of course it was against us. Ginger fixed us wonderful dinner and we all hit our tents early on a beautiful starry and moonlit night.