River Rafting

Last year over the 4th of July weekend, the Litchfield family (My Dad's Side) went to Alpine, Wyoming and we went river rafting! We all had tons of fun. We had two rafts, a smaller blue one and a large white one. Since we all had a BLAST!!! We decided that weekend that we wanted to go again this year, but have more people come! I love our family!! :)

Anyways, this year we went a month earlier and went the first weekend in JUNE. This may not seem like it would make a big difference, but we were ALL nervous we would freeze. We also heard rumors (from the weather man) that it might snow that weekend. However, we went forward and headed to Alpine!

Here are a few of the pictures from our runs down the river- stolen from Nichole, Thanks! :)


Right before we went, there was a HUGE landslide that blocked the road. The above picture is just a small part of the landslide. Luckily by the time we went, it was mostly under control and we could still raft and drive on the road!

The green raft was the "small" one this year and the white/grey one was the bigger raft for more people and was more stable. We felt comfortable having the younger kids go on the stable raft. The green one might have been a little scary for them.

The group on the white raft this run was not smiling. Why you ask... Well, this was the run that we had a 7 year old on the raft with us and the rest were adults. We were planning for a pretty easy run down the river, with hitting rapids and a little bit of fun. LITTLE did we know what we were in for.... Right before this picture was taken, the white raft hit a rapid that was caused by the landslide PERFECTLY and EVERYONE (including the 7 year old- Cooper) was thrown into the water.

What I remember... I didn't see anything coming. I thought everything was going smooth, and then all of a sudden, I was IN the water... then I was UNDER the raft and I started to PANIC, I remembered NOT to panic and tried to calm down, feeling above my head to get out from under the raft and get my head ABOVE water (which I am told all lasted 5-7 seconds, but seems LONGER). Then someone GRABBED my life jacket and pulled me up, so I could breathe (I found out later it was my Dad and Mark). The said, "GRAB THE ROPE!" My head was FINALLY above water and was SO grateful! My uncle on one side, my Dad on the other. My breathing was labored and I struggled to catch my breath, as we went through the rapids and waves continued to push all of us down into the water and give us only a moment to catch a quick breath before the next dunking. My shoes were coming off. I reached down, grabbed them both off me feet, going under water and tried to throw them into the boat. I struggled, so my Dad threw them in.

There was no time or breathe to yell or cry, we just took in air when we could and held on to the rope. Our bodies were weak and the water was FREEZING. We were heading for a rock, my cousin Cody was in front of the raft, I thought we were going to hit him with the raft and throw him under water. We all yelled to him "WATCH OUT!" The raft reached him and somehow he was fine, and was now holding the rope attached to the raft.

We finally saw the green raft up ahead. We reached them and they grabbed Cooper first, me, Laurie and Sarah. I was in the green raft now and out of the water, but my body would not stop shaking. Cooper was crying. We were unsure of where Dee was, then we saw a part of her life jacket. She had lots a hold of the raft and was alone and being SMASHED by waves. We were nervous. Somehow everyone was not in a raft except Dee, we hadn't gotten to her yet. In the green raft we used EVERY ounce of strength we had to paddle to Dee up stream. It was too difficult, so we tried to just stay in one place. She finally reached our raft as she floated and the men pulled her in. Her journey was the most difficult and scary.

The two rafts pulled to the side in a calm area and Tyler, my Dad and someone else held the two rafts and stood on the shore. We needed a break, time to recooperate. We waited what only seemed to be a minute or two and then got back into our rafts, with Dan adding to the white raft to help paddle. We were all okay, but we were scared.

No one taking pictures, waiting for us at the end or even the green raft knew there was a problem. Once we reached the green raft and they saw our faces, they knew things were not ok. The people waiting on the shore had NO CLUE. The first person up to the parking lot told the story. We wish they would have gotten some pictures so we all could know what really happened, but no one knew it would be a big spill, we thought it was an easy ride. LIVE and LEARN, right? :)

It was a great and amazing weekend with family and stories that we will be telling for a lifetime! I want my whole family to know how much I LOVE them and I am so grateful that we are all safe! It could have been WAY worse. (Good thing we prayed before the first run that day!! Oh, the POWER of PRAYER!)