What can you do in Iowa on a 96 degree day? Well, you can tube down the Des Moines river out of Seven Oaks Recreation in Boone, Iowa. This was the second time we have done this, the first being two years ago, and I was a bit nervous going into our first trip with three young kids. I had no idea how deep the water was, how fast the water would run and what kind of obstacles we would encounter. My fear was that the water would be high, the flow would be fast and there would be a bunch of stuff in the water to try and avoid. All of that was true. When we pulled up to the launch site, I about shit myself. That wide, brown torrent of death was looking back at me, and I'm pretty sure I heard it laugh. The kids were 3, 7 and 8 and I had no idea how we were going to keep track of them and keep them all alive. Well they all seemed to survive and in fact, Mason was jumping off his tube and swimming around all by himself, something I wasn't willing to do. This year, I went into the trip with a little less fear, a little less apprehension and a little less ability to hold my pee. Mistake one of the day, I downed a bunch of water so I wouldn't dehydrate, seeing as how all the weather people were predicting 110 degree heat index. That means I will be peeing on myself for the next few hours, not something I'm happy with or proud of, but what the hell are you supposed to do? This year, we got to the start point and the river looked the same as last year, but I wasn't worried. OK, maybe a little, but I heard no laughing from the river, so I was ready to take the plunge. Last year, they had lots of rope to tie all the tubes together, but when we asked today, they said it was a "liability" issue and didn't want us to tie up. Well that doesn't fly with parents with small kids. I found a few strands of rope and another guy with us found some more. The Seven Oaks people do tie your cooler to one raft, so you don't loose that, but I guess the kids aren't as important. They said that we couldn't tie up because if one person got stuck, everyone got stuck. My thought was, yeah, so you have people to help you get unstuck. If you get wedged on a tree, and everyone else makes it by, you spend the next hour trying to catch up to the group. We got about 200 yards down river and we all paddled to the side and tied as much of our group together as we could. We used our stolen rope, shoe strings and a t-shirt.
The float was smooth with few obstacles on the first half. Our main goal this year, was to make it to a sand bar so we could stop, get off the rafts, and do a little playing, eating and just hanging out. Last time, we had this same goal and failed miserably. We only saw a few sand bars and they were always on the opposite side of the river we were on. We tried to paddle over, but never made it. I'm happy to say that, even though we never made it to a sand bar, we did in fact make it to a rocky beach that we were able to pull ourselves out of the water on to and spent some time playing. There were tadpoles and frogs, so Max and Makiah were in heaven. There was a lot of mud, so Makiah looked like he had black socks on when we left. As we were trying to re-tube everyone, the tubes with people on them were trying to pull the tubes people were still tyring to get on, down the river. I hopped off my tube, holding on to the long string of tubes and tried to hold everything up so a few in our group could tube up. The ground was about 2 feet under the water and it was rather large, sharp, rocks. I was pulled off my feet and landed with my right arm down on the rocks and cut the palm of my hand, my wrist and my elbow. Nothing major, but seeing as I have my hand in less than desirable water, (somebody pee'd in it)I'm guessing I will need to have something amputated soon. There are 2 things that stand out to me as highlights of the trip. The first is the Kate Shelley High Bridge, which is the tallest double track railroad bridge in America. It really is quite spectacular, and you get to see it pass over your head. Max LOVES trains, so to be able to see 5 trains cross these bridges in the small amount of time it is in your view is pretty cool. The second thing is, on one of the road bridges you go under, there are hundreds of those mud bird nests, stuck to the underside of the bridge. It's really cool to see them flying around and diving into the mud homes. I might be the only one in our group that really enjoyed it, but I did.
We managed to hit the landing dock, loaded up the bus and headed home. The thermometer on the van said it was 88 degrees when we headed home at 1:30 pm. By the time we hit home at 2:30 pm, it was 96 degrees with 107 heat index. Why it couldn't have been that warm when my ass was being drug down the river, I have no idea.
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