Fun stuff!

Today some friends invited me to go dingying in a river with them. Now that C and K are old enough to stay at home by themselves for a few hours, it's possible for me to slip away and do something fun (kind of a rare event!), and I couldn't resist the invitation. Too bad I don't have any pictures to share - didn't want the camera to get wet.

The river can get low this time of the summer, making dingying kind of slow, but since there had recently been a lot of rain in that area, we thought it would be running well. It must have been really low before the rain, because it was still pretty slow in places, but we had a relaxing time floating (there were NO mosquitoes to fight off), and then at times paddling madly to try to avoid big rocks and the odd branch. We did get totally hung up on rocks a few times - found out that it worked best when unable to avoid approaching rocks to lay sideways on the dingy and lift up our bums and we could, for the most part, keep from getting stuck, but even this wasn't always successful. It sometimes took lots of effort to get ourselves un-stuck, and made for some good laughs. I nearly totally fell in trying to get out of the dingy at our stopping point. :o)

At one point where the water was very calm, we came around a bend and saw these dark heads poking up out of the water, with slender necks - almost looked like kids swimming. But no - some kind of animal. At first we thought they were beavers. There were four of them. They would poke their heads up, look at us, look at each other, make some weird noises that I can't describe, and disappear into the water, only to appear again a few feet away. Once we floated up to where they were, they disappeared and then we didn't see them again. After I got home I started wondering if they could have been river otters, and after looking at some pics online I think that must be what they were. I found some good pictures here. (Hmmm . . . for some reason the pics don't show up like they should with this link - so once you're there, click on the "Video and Sound" tab and then back to "Facts and Photos".)

It was a fun little getaway. Once I got home, the kids informed me that while I was gone, they didn't have any disagreements at all! Bonus. Another rare event. ;o)