The plan for today was to spend a fair amount of time on or around the water. The river which we tube down had the water levels brought back up so it was open again probably for one of the last times this year. We decided we would take advantage of it and get there as soon as the tube rental spot opened at 10:00.
Timing wise everything worked out great, we made it there right on time. The weather was nice but there still weren’t a lot of people around. We had a couple extra kids with us so there was a lot of people and all their things to keep track of so things got a bit stressful. We dropped some of the bigger kids at the top of the river with my sister and the boats to start to pumping them up while we drove one of the vehicles down to the bottom.
My arms and back were really sore this morning from the workouts I’ve been doing. So pumping the boats wasn’t something I was looking forward to doing. But we got them done and started walking down. We quickly realized that one of my sisters boats that we were going to borrow had a hole in it. This freaked some of the kids out because they didn’t want to go in a boat in case it got a hole in it while we were going down. So after discussion and a bit of arguing my sister decided her and her family weren’t going.
We went off anyway. The tube I had rented for myself tied to one of the boats was a lot bigger than usual. I had a hard time reaching my arms down into the water to paddle and steer myself. I felt like a T-Rex trying to do anything. As I was supposed to be the guide for the boat behind me and lead them down this was a bit stressful. Luckily the water levels were quite high so even some of the usually shallow areas weren’t too bad.
After heading home for some lunch we took off again out to Lumsden’s Dam Provincial Park to go for a swim. It’s a beautiful spot and I was able to spend some time doing one of my favourite things, swimming out fairly far and just floating on my back. The water over my ears blocks out most sounds or at least muffles them, the sun shinning down on me, and the slight ripples bobbing me up and down slightly.
Sandy McFadden 