Whitewater Rafting on the American River » July 15
Man it’s getting so difficult to keep this thing updated. I’ve missed a lot of stuff, a baseball game and barbeque, Exploratorium and loads of other stuff.
My parents were supposed to be out for a visit this weekend, but unfortunately my granny died after a short illness, so they had to cancel their trip and take care of that.
This weekend I had both Saturday and Sunday off which meant I could spend some time hanging out with Valerie and some other friends. It was a really good weekend for a change.
Saturday
Saturday I spent mostly in Muir Woods. I’ve been a few times before and it’s a good way to spend an afternoon if you like the outdoors and you like walking. Although, we took the bus there and the windy road down to the park made me feel a little sick. I forgot to pack my camera, which is a bit of a shame but Valerie took plenty of photos which I’ll steal off her blog if I get the chance. The return from Muir Woods worked out quite well as the bus drops you off in Marin City (it’s probably the size of Broughshane - ‘city’ my arse) so we were able to go to Outback Steakhouse and treated ourselves to a good 14oz ribeye. Tasty it was.
Sunday
This was definitely the better day out of the two. It began early, getting up at 5am to be exact. We met my friends Arturo, Diogo and his girlfriend Kareni as they picked us up at 5.30am. We were on our way to Coloma, which is a virtual ghost town about one hour north-east of the state capital of Sacramento. That translates to about a 2.5 hour drive from SF, and also meant skipping breakfast.
Earlier in the week I had secured a good deal on river rafting on the south fork of the American River. Managed to get about 33% knocked off the price for a full 21 mile trip on the river for just our group.
The drive up turned out to be quite quick and despite being a little tired it didn’t seem too long. Coloma is a very historic place in California’s history, as it’s famous for Sutter’s Mill where, on January 24th 1848, James Marshall discovered gold in the river. The chain of events that occurred after the discovery caused the California Gold Rush of 1849, which is almost entirely responsible for populating our state. The population in San Francisco alone grew from a few hundred in 1848 to hundreds of thousands in less than 30 years with men coming from far and wide hoping to strike it rich with gold. As it turned out, the only people who profited during the rush were those entrepreneurs smart enough to notice a good business opportunity in the selling of miners equipment and clothing, notably Levi Strauss (the jeans guy) and several others. Poor James Marshall should have kept his mouth shut. The incomprehensible influx of prospectors literally forced him off his own land, and he ended up dying penniless, never profiting at all from his discovery. Should have kept his mouth shut.
The American River provides some of the best rafting in the country, so we were all quite excited to get going. The weather was excellent. It was a little cloudy at the start of the day, but still very warm. I had to slap on buckets of sun cream as I knew the water would no doubt only make my chances of burning even greater.
Our guide for the day was Alison, who did a great job of keeping us on course and instructing us. I was surprised at the size of some of the rapids, as it really was quite dangerous. We got news that one of the rafts behind us had flipped over and one guy got smashed against a rock, but managed to not break anything. Diogo fell out of the raft at one point and hit a rock too, but I think he got lucky and escape without injury.
The full 21 miles was long but I enjoyed every minute. I really think that a shorter trip would have been too short. The weather brightened up during the day and by lunch time the sun was out. I think the best part of the trip was being away from the city and just being surrounded by hills and water, it was so peaceful. The air was and smell around Coloma was fantastic too, it just smelt like wood and trees and not car exhaust.
I don’t have any photos of the rafting right now, as we took a waterproof disposable camera which needs developed.
After the rafting, we chilled out a bit back at the campsite where we left. They had a nice swimming pool where we cooled off for a while.
After leaving, we stopped for about 30 minutes at the James Marshall Discovery Park, the exact site of the gold discovery. Here’s a couple of photos:
We stopped in Sac for food on the way back, it was 83°F at 10pm at night. Got a good chinese all-you-can-eat buffet for under $10, which was good. On the way home, almost everyone was sleeping but I can never seem to sleep anywhere but my bed. I’ll post some of the rafting photos when I get the prints back.
