Misery Loves Company: Spring Break on the River

We were sitting on a sandbar in wet clothes somewhere in the middle of the Colorado River, on the first evening of our 19-mile Spring Break kayak journey, when my wife looked at me and said, “I can’t remember when I felt this miserable.”

I laughed.

She didn’t. It was not a joke at the time – but we’re laughing about it is now.

As our muscles and our sunburns have recovered, so has her assessment of her first long river trip.

“I’m glad I went,” she said the other day.

She even said she might do it again.

Some of the best trips don’t have to be relaxing – or even that fun-filled.

Sometimes it’s about the accomplishment of doing something hard, together.

And maybe regaining a renewed appreciation for how soft your bed is. Or how sandfree normal meals are.

There’s an old saying: “Misery Loves Company” We had plenty of misery and company on this trip, but I wouldn’t change much (except to bring a few more sleeping bags).

My wife and I, our four kids, and two dogs, recently got back from what was a twoday journey down the Colorado River, starting at Plum Park and ending at the Boat Ramp in La Grange. I and some of our kids had done this trip on several spring breaks (but not in years). Our 16-year-old calls it a ‘canon event’of Wick childhood. But this time was the first for Chrystal and our youngest son, Penn, 10. We have one double kayak, but my brother was kind enough to lend us three more kayaks so all six of us could go.

The river snakes around in so many different directions on the stretch we were going, but in a meteorological anomaly, it seemed that the wind was in our faces the entire time. Plus the river isn’t exactly flowing at a quick rate right now, so paddling was tough. My wife admitted she was expecting more floating, less paddling.

So we were all exhausted mid-afternoon of our first day, when we got to our campsite, an island midway down. That night the temperature got down into the upper-40s, and much of the warm clothes we had brought were hanging in a nearby tree soaking wet.

We also had a trio of kayak flips, one phone sink down to the bottom of the river (but it was in a water-proof case and was saved) and one dog went rogue and had to be chased down. But that’s the extent of the lows.

There were so many amazing things in between.

We saw three different beaver families.

We saw a flock of about 50 white pelicans in the river, and one bald eagle cruising above the water – not to mention tons of other water birds.

We saw dozens of turtles but not a single snake.

We laughed around a campfire at night and again in the morning.

Hot dogs and sausage cooked over a fire and wrapped in tortillas never tasted so good.

Soon after we woke up that morning on the island, there was a herd of wild hogs that came spilling over a ridge towards the river. When they heard us, or the dogs, they turned around and went back the way they came.

There was an amazing sunset and an even better sunrise.

We went through a pair of exciting rapids – Buffalo Wallow Rapids about 6.5 miles down and La Grange Rock Garden rapids midway through our second day.

From the time we left Plum, we didn’t see any another humans for about 20 hours.

But by the time we floated nearer La Grange, we saw all sorts of people enjoying the river. There was a group of teen boys checking fishing lines near Chalk Bluff, and another group fishing at the boat ramp. People were putting in and taking boats out of the river at the boat ramp.

They all had the same Spring Break idea we did using some free time to get outside and have an adventure.