Salmon River & First Monarch

Corey and the kids have been in Idaho on the Salmon River on a rafting trip all week, off the grid and on the water. They said they would be back today/Saturday, so I have been checking life 360 throughout the morning to see when they happen to show up. Nothing.... until around 5:50 pm when they showed up near McCall Idaho, yay! ...and then darn - they're 7+ hours away! When they lost network on Monday they were 5 and a half hours away. I'm sure they've had fun but are also exhausted, so that's probably a bummer to have a long drive ahead of them. I don't know the details of their adventures this past week. I will have to ask them to each give me details when they get home. Actually tomorrow, cause they are going to arrive around 2 am. Corey texted that they are driving a little slower than normal and with the windows open and the heater on again, cause the transmission was overheating with the trailer they were pulling. We have texted a little bit during their drive. Corey has sent me some pictures. He said Wes was amazing help -

Without Wes, Corey might not have made it back alive. Wesley inflating the raft - 

And it's good to see he delegated the manual labor out to his sisters a little bit. 

Sophi above, Abi below with Wesley in the background, still working. 

Corey: "Wes was amazing. He rowed basically the entire river. He worked his butt off the entire time - and I let him. I would have been hating the trip without him."

"Rafting is a lot of fun - but it is a ton of work. The work is constant."

I asked him if the trip was worth all the work he put in: "I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze. The first couple of days I could see ourselves trying to do a trip like this every year. But now I see it as more of a really good thing for the kids - Wes especially. It was magical and very fun - but nearly constant work....and a lot of work/cleanup remains..."

Enjoying a moment to sit down and relax!

Wes the worker - 

Lily with camper braids ~

Sophi getting out tangles - 

Half of the group taking a selfie - 

The scenery looked beautiful!

Work work work - 

Pack and unpack - 

Load and unload - 

There were four families in the group. 

I'm sure there are more pictures and videos, but this will do for now. They exist, so to future family historians who might be reading this: you might have to go in search of more pictures yourself. But as of July 2022, they are out there somewhere. 

Go as descendants of the Morgans, Felixes, or Jones'.

Wesley - the worthy captain of their Wride raft. 

I'll update this part below later with each of their favorite parts: 

Wesley - favorite part was the rapids "cause they were fun and were lot bigger than the ones we had on Desolation. Salmon had class 4 rapids, on Desolation the highest was a class 3 and we only had two of those, and I wasn't allowed to row the class 3s on Deso, but I rode the whole time on Salmon." 

Abi - 

Lily - 

Sophi - her favorite part was the rapids too, "cause it was exciting. I also liked playing Mr. President." I asked Sophi how to play that game... She said they'd be sitting on the raft rowing and then whoever decides they want to play it, puts their finger to their ear, another person notices and puts fingers to their ear... 

As if they are trying to listen to their spy earpiece, Sophi: "So the last person to put their fingers to their ears, like they are the Secret Service, the last person to do that is the president and everyone has to yell "Mr. President" and shove them in the water, as if someone was going to shoot them." Corey said the girls played that with each other the WHOLE time that Wes was working and rowing, and that it was a lot of fun. They were the party raft. Corey brought along water guns too, so they had battles with the other boats. I'm glad they were all safe and had a good experience. We'll be glad when they get home!

Here at home, we had a fun week with cousins. 

They left around 10. Here they are getting their last bits of exercise before spending the day in the car. They are driving straight home, all day and all night. They've got it down to a system from driving non stop home in years past, so they're pros. I was hoping they'd be here to see our first monarch emerge, but the butterfly was taking it's time and it eclosed an hour after they left. 

Yay! Our first monarch of the season! 

We were glad that we saw it emerge!

I called the kids over to see. It's amazing!

This one was a male, so cool! We love it! I'm looking forward to an amazing butterfly summer!