River rafting in Montana

On Tuesday morning we drove about 45 minutes north to Big Sky, Montana to go river rafting with Ryan's family.  Grant was too young to go so he stayed home with Grandma.  We got fitted and suited up with life vest and helmets for everyone wet suits for the kids.  We then took a 30 minute van ride to the river.  We were rafting on the Galatin River.  The guides said that we got lucky because it had rained the day before and the river was high for July.  He also said that the river was murky because of being churned up so much.  We couldn't all fit into one raft so we got separated, but our raft was right behind Ryan's so we were able to take pictures of each other.  Here is a picture of the kids in all of their gear.

Here we are pushing off for our adventure. 

Claire moved up to the front to get a front seat to the action.

Ryan, Mandy, Isabel, Landon and Mia.

There were some pretty good rapids down the river.

Claire got soaking we on some big rapids.

The guide said this waterfall was just trickling days before the rain.

This is a picture from the rafting company.  Towards the end we hit some pretty good rapids, in fact, Andrew lost his oar on one of them.  We were headed straight towards a rock, so Andrew dropped his oar to try to push off the large rock, which was not what he was supposed to do.  When we hit the rock, I slid across the boat into Andrew.  It all happened so fast that there was no time to be scared.  It was definitely a little heart stopping.  

We survived!  The trip was about 1.5 hours and tons of fun.  The kids all wanted to go again.  We went back to Big Sky and had lunch.  The adults were cold the whole time since we didn't have other clothes to change into.

On our way back to the cabin, Mandy spotted a bear cub in the grass.  We were able to turn around and get a picture.  The scenery was amazing on the drive.