Riverboarding and Meteors

Last weekend was our annual church Family Camp. It was the usual old-fashioned good time of sports and games, water-balloon wars, and baptisms down by the river. A highlight for me this year was that our resident jewelry designer, EL, had brought all of her supplies and held bead workshops for us crafty types. I was interested in making something with shells since I hadn’t worked with them before. Here’s my finished necklace:

The most-awesomest swimming area ever is about 20 minutes from the camp, Colliding Rivers. You can jump from the rocks, travel down the rushing stream, (deep, though – no dangerous rapids) and as we tried for the first time this year, riverboarding!

I didn’t really know about the existence of this sport before this week. The picture at left is not of anyone in our group, and we didn’t have any fancy equipment – just a home-made wooden board with a normal (non-bungee) rope and a water-ski type handlebar. But we surfed! I say “we” because I did give it a go, and almost got all the way to a standing position. BN basically rocked, getting up on his first try and staying steady for quite awhile.

Before any of this could happen, the guys had to find a way to anchor the rope well upstream from our chosen rapid (a perfect spot, too – smooth, fast-flowing rapids with no big rocks sticking out.) In order to do that they had to dislodge a huge log from its perch among the cliffs, get it floated across the river without letting it get sucked downstream, and get it firmly lodged with rocks on the side closer to the smooth rapids. I was skeptical that it would all work out and be worth the effort but the group got 2 days of riverboarding out of it.

After camp, BN and I drove to Diamond Lake (with a view of Mt. Theilsen)…

… and camped out one more night to watch the meteor shower, which was at its peak during that time, and there was no moon. It was amazing. I’ve never seen so many stars, and it was actually not that dark in spite of no moon. We didn’t need flashlights to get down to the boat dock where we got all cozy in our mummy bags with camping mattresses and even pillows. The trouble was, I was all worn out from our big day of swimming and I was too comfortable. So I wasn’t able to stay awake for very long. But we did see a lot of shooting stars (compared to most nights!) and I’ve never seen the Milky Way so bright, so clearly visible, and stretching all the way across the sky. Wow!

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 19:1