We'll Just go a Little Further....

That was our thought yesterday when we floated the Jefferson river. After stopping at a gas station to load up with ice, beer, water, and a little food for a snack we headed on down towards the river. Three of us had never floated the Jefferson before (me included). Only one of us knew the way and how all this worked.

We dropped one car off at the get-out point and then proceeded up the road to the put-in spot. It wasn't that far up the road. So we asked the guy how long of a float it was and he said about 2.5 hours. Naturally, that wasn't long enough so we decided to head up the road "just a little further" to see if there were any other good spots to put in at.

We found a spot that was a little sketchy, but we got in OK and started our float. Just four of us....all guys. We had a raft, two tubes, and one chair-raft-thingie that was meant for fishing, a cooler, two sippy cups, and a football. (if you don't know what my sippy cup is, scroll down or go back through the archives until you find the picture. You can't miss it).

We floated, we drank, we swam. The one guy that knew the float got completely hammered at about the three hour mark. We had to take turns "babysitting" him because he couldn't stay in his tube or successfully navigate the river bottom to walk.

We kept thinking that around any bend we'd be coming up on the original put-in spot, but NO! We kept floating....and floating....and floating...and floating. We didn't see anybody. We lost the road....or rather the road lost us since we were fixed to the river as it were. We did see lots of cool wildlife, though. Monstrous pelicans seemed to be the choice wildlife of the day and we kept "following" a flock of them down the river. I don't think I have ever seen pelicans that were this big. And of course, we didn't see another single person on the river. Apparently there weren't any other morons that were stupid enough to put in so far up the river.

SEVEN HOURS LATER we made it to the put-in spot. It was now just before 8:00 at night!! No way were we going to go another 2.5 hours. We were sunburned, fried, tired and generally wiped out. So we thought, there is no way we went that far up the road. The guy who left his car there got a ride up the road and sure enough it was only about five minutes further. Just five minutes tacked on seven hours of float time. Unbelievable.