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Lazy River - Cyrus enjoying the sun and the water on the american river. And of course Jimmy our guide.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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The second weekend of June we went whitewater rafting and camping on the American river with Cyrus, Athena, Sparky (Brian) and Erin (Tegra). We had a blast!! We had a cool canvas cabin with bunk beds and two days of rafting ahead of us.
The first day we were taking on the south fork of the river which had rapids up to class 3, we rafted 13 miles of the river and really enjoyed ourselves. Along the way we saw both people and contraptions panning for gold, some adorable baby duckies and lots of beautiful hills. Plus we met a few really good rapids and had ourselves a grand time. At the end of the south fork we dumped into a river where a jet ski came to tow us and several other rafts all chained together across the lake to the docking spot.
I took a few videos with my waterproof camera, but since I was also paddling the camera was just tied off to my life jacket and then wedged into the top of the life jacket (cleavage cam Cyrus called it). Once we actually hit a rappid the camera would come out of where it was wedged and swing around. It made for some interesting videos, a couple of which I have included here.
We got back to the cabin before 5pm and got to hang out, get an outdoor sholder massage, play some games and drink buttery nipples (butterscotch schnapps and irish cream) while looking out on the river. We also skipped some stones and listened to the live band playing at the bar across the river. The only down side was our rude neighbors who got in very late and didn't seem to understand just how loud they were being at 2am when we would all be getting up for breakfast and rafting the next day.
Do You Stick Your Tongue Out At Me? - Athena being cute. Jimmy Our guide behind her.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Explorer Kevin - Rafting the American River.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Hello Up There - Looking back up at the wimps who didn't jump in. ;)
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Man & Woman Overboard - ya know, cause we jumped in. Gotta love floating down the American river on your back!
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Heading Into The Rapid - Photos from one of the local rafting photo companies of us on one of the level 3 rapids of the Souther fork of the American River.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Going Down - Photos from one of the local rafting photo companies of us on one of the level 3 rapids of the Souther fork of the American River.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Breaking Through The Wave - Photos from one of the local rafting photo companies of us on one of the level 3 rapids of the Souther fork of the American River.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Drenched - Read the whole story and see the new photo blog: http://stories.phoenixfeather.net/14-whitewater-rafting.php - Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Singing What? - So the video is a little crazy as the camera is hanging by its string from my life jacket, but you can see some and you can hear us all singing through the rapid, though we don't seem to all know what all the others are singing.
- Video by Rachel Lea Fox
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Day One Rafters - Left to Right: Athena, Erin (Tegra), Kevin, Brian (Sparky), Rachel, Cyrus
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Re-Living '49 - Gold miner panning for gold on the side of the American River, southern fork.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Foreshadowing - Watching the boat in front of us to see what we will be doing next.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Anticipation - Going into one of the class 3 rapids on the southern fork of the american river. One of the local photo companies takes photos from the rocks.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Drenched - Going into one of the class 3 rapids on the southern fork of the american river. One of the local photo companies takes photos from the rocks.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Big Wave - Crazy shaky video, but us talking about the upcoming big wave is kinda funny.
- Video by Rachel Lea Fox
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In His Eyes - Looking into Sparky's beautiful eyes, I mean glasses you can see us all. Kevin is in the right lens, I'm in the right with the camera in hand and then you can see the lazy bones rest of our group laying out on the raft and our guide Jimmy in the back. At this point we had hitched up to a chain of rafts behind a jet ski and were being pulled along a lake.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Float On - - Video by Kevin Fox
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Cloud Gazing - You can see the clouds they are analyzing reflected in their glasses and they float along the end of the southern fork of the American River.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Under-Tow - This is what happens when you try to film underwater while your boat is being towed by a jet-ski - Video by Kevin Fox
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Cheers - Campers at the end of the first day of rafting the American river. We have an awesome canvas cabin with bunk beds and a porch that we are sitting out on drinking buttery nipples. Erin, Athena, Cyrus, Kevin, Rachel, Sparky.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Making Concoctions - Cyrus is mixing our buttery nipples for us on our porch in the woods.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Cheers - Here's to drinking candy, and rafting... yay!
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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A Real Lady Sips Her Cocktail - And hold out her pinky. Oh and men do it too, right Sparky! ;)
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Skipping Stones - Erin skipping stones on the American river which is much lower now. The river is damn controled so the level is down pretty far now. We launched from this spot just this morning.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Lovely America - The southern fork of the American River.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Rock Climbing - Rocks now exposed as the damn is slowed and the sourthern fork of the american river is rather low.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Did You See That? - Erin and Kevin having fun skipping stones.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Mark On Nature - On the banks of the southern fork of the American River.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Look What I Got - Kevin showing off his skipping stone to me and Erin.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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4 Skips... - Kevin's stone is skipping along to the other side of the river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Skipping Stones - Cyrus skipping stones
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Day two meant the middle fork of the American river and 19 miles including class 4+ rapids. This fork was even more beautiful and more fun than the first. It had a very "land of the lost" feeling and the Tunnel Shoot rapid was amazing. I was even able to really video tape going down this rapid and a couple more as Kevin and I figure out how to use our gorilla pod to strap the camera to my life vest pointing mostly outward.
Our only mishap was when we did manage to get ourselves stuck while surfing in a rapid called Cleavage which nearly lost me, Kevin and our guide Jimmy into the water - or maybe we were just going to tip over, we don't know the guide in the other boat was eventually able to throw us a rope and pull us out. However other than one stuck we had almost not mishaps. No one went in the water who didn't jump because they wanted to float for a bit, no one got hurt and everyone had a great time!! We enjoyed every minute of it.
Good Morning - A class three rapid called Good Morning is out first rapid of the morning. And I got the camera gorilla podded to my life jacket for better video quality!
- Video by Rachel Lea Fox
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Tunnel Shoot One - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Tunnel Shoot Two - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Tunnel Shoot Three - Here We Go - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Tunnel Shoot Four - OMG - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Tunnel Shoot Five - Going In - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Tunnel Shoot Six - Escaped - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Tunnel Shoot Seven - Awesome - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Heading Into The Tunnel - Our first class 4+ rapid of the day and by far the best. This is on the middle fork of the american river.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Looking Back - Looking back at the "Tunnel Shoot" class 4+ rapid that we just went down. Yes, we just went down the left side of that!!
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Suggestive - Rocks along the American River
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Riding The Bull - Cyrus "riding the bull" which means sitting on the front of the raft just holding on as we go over some smaller rapids.
- Video by Rachel Lea Fox
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River Rafting - You can see Sparky and Kevin are doing a lot of work here. Actually the middle section of the middle fork in the American river is rather lazy so we got lazy too.
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Floating Along - Kevin and Sparky floating along on the American River
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Almost Lost Kevin - Rapids on the middle fork of the american river
- Video by Rachel Lea Fox
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Surfing - This is what is called surfing. You get the raft into a spot at the edge of a small water fall like rapid and star to get the water coming into the raft as it folds in and somehow holds the raft in place against the edge of the falls. It's fun, till you get stuck like we did earlier on this trip in the rapid called cleavage. Yes we were stuck, and I mean REALLY stuck, in cleavage. Unfortunately I didn't get video of that one.
- Video by Rachel Lea Fox
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Day Two Rafters - We had an awesome time!! Kevin, Cyrus, Sparky (Brian), Athena, Erin, Rachel (me).
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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Jimmy - Jimmy is from Costa Rica and he is an awesome guide on the American river!!
- Photo by Rachel Lea Fox
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