Friday June 16

Cruising The Snake River

Hells Canyon Jet Boat Excursion

Five Hours Of The Coolest Ride Of Our Life In Two Minutes and 30 Seconds

We began the final day of our river cruise by winding our way up the Snake River - and the morning's vistas were as good as any paid excursion....especially in comparison to the previous river scenes we've witnessed over the past week.  Just sensational - the photos here hardly do it justice.  Not only was it amazing to watch, but it was non-stop scenery like this for over four hours.  Really cool.  

At about 11 am we noticed we were joined on our dock in Clarkston by two jet boats.  And this was the beginning of the BEST outing of the week!  We left the dock at about 11:45 and by 12:15 we had cleared the reservoir and were on our way up into Hells Canyon.  We were told that the canyon was in "flood condition" as the winter snows were melting.  What was interesting about this to us, even though we won't see it, is that we were told much of what we saw today would drop by as much as 35-40 feet!  This just seemed incredible to us.  It was also very interesting that we were told that the water typically flows at about 12 cubic meters of water per second, but currently is flowing at a little over ONE HUNDRED cubic meters per second!  Some other interesting facts about Hells Canyon.  It is the deepest canyon in North America - what about the Grand Canyon you ask?  It's 1,600 feet DEEPER than the Grand Canyon!  How deep does the water run?  From as shallow as two feet to a depth (non-flood conditions) of over 125 feet!  Finally, by the time we turned around (where the photos of the four of us and Kim & I are taken in the canyon at the bottom) we'd traveled some fifty miles on our jet boat and had gone up in elevation by over 300 feet!  Even if you watch the video at the top of the page you cannot appreciate how spectacular the scenery was.....all the while we were speeding along over the top of the water and shooting through the rapids.  AND we stopped for a sensational lunch along the way......where a deer walked right by us.  What a great way to cap the week's adventures!

Tomorrow we board a bus for Spokane at 7 am and will spend the weekend there checking it out and winding down from our big week.  Our flight home is at 6:30 am Monday morning.  One more journal entry to sum up the Spokane part of the post-cruise and we'll close the book on another great trip!