We were supposed to go yesterday. It was sunny and hot, and we had been presented this grand, ambitious plan to go up to the town of Lyons, set into the St Vrain on inner tubes, and float all the way down and get out somewhere in Longmont. It seemed a bit much for the two of us who had never gone tubing before, but I was willing to make the attempt, having been assured that it was actually possible by the one who had never tried this specific float trip, but made a lot of assumptions. The day got away from us yesterday, and instead we spent half an hour at the pool at the condo, ate pho, and then came home. Today was cloudy and cooler, but we still intended to try some part of this plan. I learned as we were preparing to load the truck that we were not going to do the big 10 or 15 mile trip (thank goodness), but just play a little in the broad parts of the river in Lyons.
I dressed much as I had yesterday when I thought we were doing this thing. I wore an expensive new long-sleeved 50 SPF t-shirt over my swimsuit, and I wore leggings and cheap Keds. I covered my face in mineral sunscreen of a similar SPF, so I had a distinct pale cast to my complexion. I didn't care that the cloud cover appeared to be increasing throughout the day. I just bought this shirt yesterday, and I wanted to see how well it protected me from getting ill during water activities. I wore a stained CU cap and planned to leave my prescription glasses in the car, choosing instead to borrow cheap sunglasses. I put my phone in a zippy bag, imagining floating slowly like we were at a lazy river in a water park.
When we got to the spot we would set in, the water was rushing much, much faster than I expected. The big drop was steeper and longer than I knew I could safely maneuver, and I was certain I'd go upside down at the bottom of it, and I wasn't sure I could pull myself out of it. That man ran willy-nilly into the river, hopped on a tube, and went over the falls. And then he went ass over teakettle, just as we expected. He was able to swim to shore and come back up to where we were. XS decided the water was FAR too cold for her, so she sat on the bridge and took pictures. I waded in up to my knees, and it was cold but not bad on just my legs, but I wasn't about to fight the swift current. The Mr took two more trips down the water, losing his sunglasses on the last flip over the falls. While we were on the shore, waiting to take pictures of his last float, a big fancy inner tube with a headrest and handles came floating by itself down from upstream, upside down. We kept thinking a person would come with it, but no one did. The man jumped into the current and grabbed it, and pulled it to the shore. A minute or two later, I realized he was standing talking to a county sheriff. I thought maybe he was in trouble for being in the fast running water, but I'd seen other people go past in kayaks, so surely that wasn't forbidden? They talked a long time, and I sat on a bench with my legs soaked from the knees down, wondering whether I was going to get a talking-to for being in the water, if that's why they were having a conversation with the man. Oddly it appeared that the sheriffs were more interested in the runaway raft. It turned out that the people who lost it upstream saw the sheriffs and asked them to track it down, which seemed like a weird thing to ask law enforcement to do. After the owner came down to retrieve it, and he invited us up for a beer as a thank you, did I hear more fragments of the story. There might have been another person involved, who may or may not have been less fortunate than the stray water toy. I didn't stay for the whole conversation, so I'll have to ask the Mr what he was told. It would make more sense for the involvement of the authorities if there was an actual person in distress.
On the way home we followed the path of the river, past some industrial sites, farms, family homes, etc. I'm 100% okay with not achieving the original plan of trying to float for hours from one town to the next. that would have been way too much for novices.
And it wasn't until I was in bed, beginning to sort my thoughts for writing tonight's post that I looked at my pictures. Turns out leaving the camera in the zippy bag was a bad idea. I mean, it kept it watertight, even though I didn't get close enough to moving water with it to be in danger. But every single one of my pictures looks like it was taken through translucent plastic. Which they were.
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