For spring break 2008 nine friends and I (including Analisa and Ebay) headed down to one of our friend's (Paul's) parent's ranch in Northern California. We went to an Easter church service Sunday morning then started the 17 hour drive. Most of the drive was in the middle of the night through the middle of nowhere in Eastern Oregon. We had trouble finding a gas station at 3 in the morning when we hadn't seen a town in hours and we became quite quick at bathroom stops in the middle of the road. At one point in the drive we had a "herd" of wild mountain goats run across the road in front of us. I believe we arrived about 6 in the morning and crashing for about 3 hours before starting our adventures on the ranch.
One day we got to shoot guns. We set targets up across the creek and Paul's dad brought out a shot gun, a semi-automatic, and an elephant gun. The elephant gun had huge shells. They are the biggest you can buy and the gun kicked so hard we had to have someone stand behind us and brace us.
We went four wheeling along trails for hours. One day he took us up the side of a mountain that still had snow on it and we were definitely swerving a little close to the edge of a sheer drop off for my liking. We also did knife throwing, went on many hikes and enjoyed campfires.
My favorite part was the rafting. There is a small river that runs through the ranch and the girls decided they wanted to go rafting. The biggest rapids the river had were Class III so it was anything the guys were willing to wake up early for. We went super early in the morning and it was really cold, so we wore wetsuits. At the bottom of one rapid there was a tree down in the water and we hit it and our boat when up in the air. It didn't flip over, one side of the raft went up the trunk so we were perpendicular with the water. The girls on the bottom edge were in the water and one girl got swept away immediately. Two of us were holding on to the other girl but eventually she slipped out too. They were carried pretty far down stream before they were able to grab on to something. We got the boat righted again but only had one paddle, as we had lost all the others. The radio also got water logged so we couldn't call anyone. We ended up getting the raft to the other side of the river so we could beach it while we tried to get the others girls. They were on the other side, so we positioned
ourselves downstream to catch them once they let go. The river carried them so fast they got past us before we were able to safely get them out of the water. Now we had to get the raft back in the water, past obstacles we would potentially after to paddle around with one paddle and make it to our pick up point. We did eventually make it there with half the people soaking wet in freezing cold weather. The person who was picking us up said they were beginning to wonder about us once they saw all of our paddles, two shoes, and a vest go floating by.
This was an unreal spring break. It was like being at summer camp but with all your close friends and you get to do whatever you want when you want to. We had fun hunting frogs, playing with cool toys, like night vision goggles, and just hanging out in the in-ground hot tub.
