Yesterday on our vacation we went White Water Rafting down the Middle Youghigheny River. The Youghigheny has some of the best White Water rafting on the East Coast and there are three places on the river that offer rafting tours, the Middle, Lower, and Upper Yough. The Upper Yough is down in Maryland and is psycho crazy with class 4 an 5 rapids; we did that one twenty years ago and it is off the bucket list; I doubt I'll ever do it again unless my daughter asks me for help when she's older. The Lower has class 3 rapids and a single class 4 and is typically the part of the river I'd want to do for some excitement mixed with some relaxing stretches. The Middle is just class 1 and 2 rapids with lots of open stretches for lazy river floating and swimming so its perfect for my daughter and other kids.

There was a wrinkle this year though; the water level was crazy low, so low the rafting company recommended we take two duckies instead of a full raft. We agreed, and so Angie and I were in the two-man duckie, and my wife in the one-man duckie. We had to drag the duckies out a good way through the water because the rocks were so close to the surface, and we had to get out several times along the river to drag the boat along. But where we could move we did so pretty well. I've had enough experience on the water I spent a good bit of my time trying to teach Angie. The first two-thirds of the trip she wasn't too helpful, but the last third she started truing to do all the rowing and complained whenever I helped her right the boat, claiming it was "Kid Culture!" not that I know where she got that expression or how it could apply. That said she did all right for her first real time rowing; I let her get us down the last part of the river, only taking over when we had a rapid to get through.

The only downside to the whole trip is that my wife and I apparently did a horrible job putting sun-tan lotion on each other. Her shoulders and legs got burned, while my legs got burned pretty bad. They still sting this morning and are quite stiff; I had to take Tylenol to get the pain to settle down long enough for me to sleep last night. And that's after rubbing them down most of the evening with ice packs. I think I'll have a cool shower this morning.

Despite the pain we grilled up some steak, chopped up one of the cucumbers from our garden, and I still played outside a little with Angie that evening. While icing my legs up we were watching "Penguins of Madagascar" which was one of the movies Angie chose to bring; it has a bit of history with our vacations because we first saw it during our first trip to this cabin four years ago, or rather, Angie was in the middle of watching it while at a kid play place at Seven Springs resort when we came to pick her up. We promised her we'd rent the movie so she could finish seeing it; man it's genuinely hilarious, and my favorite of the Madagascar movies.

Assuming my legs are up to it we'll be doing some biking today and other shenanigans around the cabin. My wife had to head back home to pick up her new pair of prescription glasses and will be taking care of some chores and grabbing the things we forgot to bring (or didn't know we needed) so it's just Angie and I today. I brought, as a surprise, some marshmallow blow guns made from pvc pipe that should be a lot of fun.

I do not think I'll have a ton of time to get to any messages or anything else on FA while I'm on my trip, so if I owe you something I'm sorry it will be late!

Dominus vobiscum