When one of your friends mentions what she wants to do on her Stagette, it usually doesn’t involve extreme sports. Well, that’s not the case for Elise. She is extremely active and adventurous, and even though I scoffed when she first mentioned going River Rafting, I knew it was right up her alley and something that would fit the day perfectly.

I wasn’t too worried about the whole thing. I guess everyone just assumed that I am exactly the same as my Mother and would be terrified over the whole thing, but I really wasn’t. I was excited for the adventure, a little apprehensive as to what to expect, but I really was excited over the whole idea.

We booked our trip through Chilliwack River Rafting and the whole experience was awesome. The staff was super helpful in setting up the stagette and their website had a lot of good information.

We got there at about 11:30 in the morning, signed in and paid our dues, then sat down for a buffet style lunch. After that we all got our gear on and were organized into two groups – Canyon Tour and Classic Tour.

I was surprised as to how many people were up there for the afternoon slot of rafting. 3 stags, 1 stagette, boy scouts and many more groups.

Our of the 12 of us that were up there 9 decided to go the Canyon Tour – which is the more difficult and experienced one – and 3 of the girls decided to do the Classic, more beginners style tour.

I’ve never been rafting before, but I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well go all out!

We were the ONLY girls who chose the Canyon tour!

The whole experience was amazing. Our tour guide was a little weary of having a raft full of girls but we pulled through and did better then some of the guys.

The safety talk we all had scared the crap out of me, but once we were on the river and got a feel for how everything worked, we were all quite relaxed.

One of Elises friends did fall out of the raft, but she was quickly saved by our guide and all was good. At least 1 person fell out of every raft that we were with (4 rafts in total).

We stopped half way down the river and had oranges as a snack. The water was freezing cold and your hands get quite sore from gripping the paddle so hard.

We made fun of Elise the most for her lack of paddling.

This is an actual action shot of our raft going through on of the tougher rapids. What I thought was really great about the whole experience is that all the rafters doing the same section of the river go down together, each raft has an experienced guide, and one guide follows everyone in a kayak to make sure everyone is safe and to point out any unusual hazards. He also acted as a great action photographer. For some reason I just thought it was going to be our little lonely raft floating down the river all by itself. It was nice to have the company of everyone else.

Our guide is  the one standing up with the blue helmet. I am right in front of him in the white helmet.

After rafting for 2 hours, we were dead tired. Not surprising at all really. When Elise mentioned going to Roosters after River Rafting I thought she was joking. I expressed the idea of how tired we would be and her reply to  me was ‘What, are you 80!?’ Yes, yes I am 80.

I wasn’t the ONLY one who was tired.

Some random kept shoving playing cards with naked men down everyone’s shirt. Liz didn’t realize what was on them until we got back to the table and she took a look. PRICELESS!

Elise spent the ENTIRE night dancing! Clearly she is NOT 80!

It was a good night, even though my cousins and I had to drag Elise off the dance floor at 1:30 because WE were all dying. She could have been their all night!

The next day was obviously a write off, but I wasn’t as sore as I thought I would be.

The whole experience was great and I’m really glad I got the chance to do it!