"Yosemite 2003" Yosemite National Park by joits

I'd already done skydiving and I was looking for my next adventure. When my friend Glenn suggested that we go river rafting... I was definitely in. Contacted several friends but most thought I was crazy. In the end, it was my sister and my friend Glenn, who lives in San Francisco.

Driving in Yosemite

Yosemite was about a six hour drive from Los Angeles. It was fairly uneventful until we got into the park where the roads were really windy and there were a lot of blind corners. It was so hard to guage how far we had gone and I thought I had missed a turn somewhere. Eventually we got to camp.

We stayed at Housekeeping camp which was a great place. I'm not much of a camper but I didn't want to stay in a hotel. So this place was sort of in-between. Next day it was our rafting trip. Needless to say we were a bit nervous. We were going on a class 4 river which looked kinda rough. The funny thing was that the trip down from the meeting point to the river was scary enough. My friends and I, as well as the rest of our rafting party were picked up on this rickety old school bus and we proceded down this tiny unpaved, rough road which was on the side of this huge hill. One wrong move and its all over. Somehow we made it alive... hehe. It started raining so the rafting co suited us up in wetsuits. After a few mins of rafting safety, we got into our raft with our excellent guide, Tim. I swear when I saw the first set of rapids, I was about to wet myself! But it was so fun, getting thrown about and struggling to stay on the raft. There were at least seven or eight sets of rapids, each with its own history and story behind the name. In all there were about five rafts and we only had one guy get thrown overboard. I came close though. It didn't rain the whole time, the sun came out eventually. In between the rapids, we got to sit back, relax and just enjoy the scenery. Our guide Tim was very good in pointing out things that we might want to know about the place. I also enjoyed "swimmer's rapids" in which we were able to jump out of the boat and go down the rapids on our own. That was fun! The rafting trip in all was around 18 miles and we were so tired. Extremely satisfied, but tired. We retired back to our camp, cooked some soup, hot dogs, and smores (yum!) and then we just kicked back and relaxed by the fire. Man that was a great night! In the morning, on the way to the restroom, I almost bumped into a black bear! We went up to Glacier Point where I took that pic above. And then we had to drive back home. I'll tell you, I had such a great time, I plan on returning with more friends for an even longer period!

• Pros:The beauty of Yosemite.
• Cons:The drive sucks.
• In a nutshell:Fun, relaxing, exhilarating all at once!