A Weekend in Arizona

Monday, August 5, 2024

This summer Lisa has travelled a lot. It has all been to help other people, but I have spent most of this summer alone. Normally I am quite happy being alone, but I was really hoping to get a trip down the Salt River before the summer ended.

So, when Justin said that he was going to make a trip down the river for Dave, I jumped at the chance to join in on the fun. I took a late flight to Phoenix last Friday, spent the morning hanging with Mom and Kira (who is recovering quickly from her surgery) and then in the afternoon we headed down the river with the kids and with some friends of Stacy’s.

To make a wonderful weekend even better, we made a second nighttime trip with Ben. I don’t have any pictures of the nighttime trip, but it was amazing. With just Me, Ben and Justin, it was so peaceful and quiet. The river was packed on the first trip, but we didn’t see a single person on the river during the night trip.

Last summer the kids took me on a night trip for my birthday and one of the many things that made the trip great was that the Perseid meteor shower peaks every year on my birthday. They say you can see up to fifty meteors an hour at the peak. We saw a lot of meteors last year but this year we were too early. They said that we should be able to see a handful of meteors an hour, but there were a lot of clouds and even though we were outside the city there was still some light pollution from the city so we didn’t see any meteors. No problem, it was so much fun anyway.

On our day trip we saw a LOT of horses. We will normally see one group of horses and if we are lucky two, but this time we saw eight groups of horses and at least a hundred horses’ total. It was amazing.

For the first half of the trip, I was with Piper and her friend, and I paddled us right up to the horses, it was pretty cool. We were perhaps ten feet from them. The girls were torn between freaking out and being excited. For the second half of the trip, I was in the kayak with Evan, and it was the same thing. Evan would say, “maybe we should back up” so I would move closer.

With one group of horses we passed, one of the horses had his head under water as we passed, and he lifted his head just as we were at our closest. The horse was very startled and just about fell trying to get away from us. Evan was just as startled as the horse.

So, a river trip last August and another one this August looks like the start of a tradition. I told Ben and Justin that we need to make this an annual birthday tradition for me. They both agreed. Everyone needs to plan on joining us for a nighttime trip down the Salt River next August. So much fun. Thanks Justin and Ben.