All fixed, and What A Ride!

About 10am, the repair man, Everett came back, this time with a female helper, installed the new air dryer, and Karen was all fixed up!  Just goes to show looks can be deceiving, he knew what he was doing, and took care of business and got her back on the road.

We drove up to White Bird, ID, where we had booked a jet boat trip on the Snake River. Jan and I with Vern and Viv, and Ray and April had taken a jet boat ride out of Lewiston many years ago and really enjoyed it, although half the ride was on very placid water.  This ride promised we would be on wild scenic river for 65 miles one way with lots of rapids.  The outfit we booked with has a small motel and campground for the customers.  It was fine, full hookups in a parking lot, but the views were quite nice.

Not bad, huh?

 Their facility sits on the Salmon River, and our ride was on the Snake.  It required a 17 mile very scenic drive up and over a mountain range from one river to the next.  The boat ride had very acceptable banking hours so we left the campground at 8:30 am.  It was an exceptional drive climbing 3150' over the top before descending back down to the Snake.

A representative view coming down

We got parked and met our buddies for the day.  There were only 20 of us on a boat that holds 50, so we could spread out.  The boat itself is quite impressive.  It is an aluminum hulled 36 footer with a 12' beam, draws only about a foot of water and is powered by 3 huge diesels driving 3 jet drives!  It is capable of 61 mph, and we went upstream at about 30 mph, and down at 45 mph!

Our boat being launched

Our transportation for the day!

Inside shot with Karen checking things out.

We took off promptly at 10am on our adventure.  A few shots along the way.  I should mention the Snake River forms Hell's Canyon, actually deeper than the Grand Canyon, it is 7993' deep at it's deepest point.  Very rugged country, and in total wilderness.

Beautiful scenery.  We went on smooth placid water, and tons of rapids, many Class 3's, and 3 Class 4-5's.  These are BIG rapids!  As we sat below the first Class 5, we were all wondering how this guy was going to get us through it?  We had to put on life vests, and they closed the windows on the front of the boat.  And you can't just go straight up through them, you have to navigate them so to avoid the rocks.  What a job our Captain did.  The photo of our first Class 5 doesn't do it justice, as we are about 50-100 yards away while we put on our life vests, and it is through the window, but I just have to say WOW!

Big water coming

Hang on!

It was a kick.  We continued 65 miles up to the base of the Snake River dam and got out to walk around and have lunch.  This is looking downstream from the overlook near the dam.

We don't have photos going back down through the rapids as we had to stow anything we wanted to keep dry, and we had to hang on for dear life.  Going down is much, much harder than going up, it is much more difficult to control the boat.  We all thought the build up was a bit much, but after the entire bow of the boat went underwater and hundreds of gallons of water poured down on us, we were believers!  We could not have gotten wetter if we jumped in:)

After we negotiated the 3 huge rapids, we were able to take off our vests, and dry out.  We saw this big Ram on the way back.

King of the Hill

Okay, enough posing, I'm out of here

We stopped at a beautiful sand beach where you could swim if you wanted, since we already had, we didn't go in :-)

The beach

We had a ball, it was a fantastic trip I highly recommend.  We went with Kilgore Adventures and were very happy, we think they are the only ones who run this particular segment of the river.  What a day!

We are now in Missoula, MT anticipating a fun 2 days before we head to Yellowstone.  Oh, by the way, 43 degrees this morning!!!!