We’re here. Life on the river. It all kind of runs together. We sleep a lot. Our motorhome fit nicely across the lot in front of Sue and John’s, and we discovered a 30-amp outlet in John’s garage. We sleep in our own bed in the air conditioning (not that Sue and John don't have air conditioning). We get up and have coffee on the deck overlooking the river. Watch the water. Go for a run. The water is low in the mornings. Not much boating. They divert water just upstream for irrigation. By lunchtime, though, it is starting to come up, and it’s getting very hot, so we have to figure out what we want to do in the boat that day. John has a boat. Picture attached.
It’s a very nice boat. It’s a jet boat. No propeller. Steering is a little goofy. You have to be under power to get any steering. Power is supplied by the unmuffled V-8, right behind your head. Sometimes we blast up the river and drift back down. You can go across the river to the cove, park against the bank and get out into the water for a while. Once we motored/drifted way down the river to a sandbar, beached it, got out and played in the water and watched the sand bar disappear as the water continued to rise. Then we stood around in water up to our knees while we had the afternoon snack.
There was a boat show to visit. V Boats. Giant blown V-8s in the shiniest, gaudiest, fastest boats you can imagine. For the show they were all trailered. We saw a few blasting up and down the river later. Some of these are 100mph boats. Picture attached.
Did I tell you there is no speed limit on the river? That’s what John tells me. You can do whatever you want as long as it involves beer. There are the aforementioned drag boats blasting back and forth. There are just plain fast boats like John’s. There are big slow pontoon boats, big jet skis, little jet skis, and children floating down on tubes. There is another rule too. You have to be at least twelve years old to fly a jet ski.
It’s pretty noisy too. On the weekends. Even so, I was surprised by how many birds we saw as we drifted down river. They didn’t seem all that disturbed.
So after we’ve boated the afternoon away, it’s time for dinner and standing under the misters on the lower deck. It’s still a hundred. It feels good to stand in the late afternoon sun with the chill of the spray all over you. Then it’s time for coffee and watching the river hawks, swallows, sunset, and bats. Or you can go sit on the edge of the floating dock, hang your feet into the cool water, lie back, and let the wake from the boats rock the dock. Next thing you know it’s time to head for bed, get a lot of sleep, and do it all again.
