A MUST-SEE Destination!
In my short lifetime, I have been to a few really beautiful places. Some of those sites include but are not limited to The Grand Canyon in Arizona, wine tasting in Napa, touring the White House in DC, stargazing in Yosemite National Park, watching the Eiffel Tower twinkle at sunset, looking for (and finding) alligators while riding in an airboat in the Everglades of Florida, and watching the sun set in Denver, Colorado.
Today I had an experience that I am adding to the list. Okay there’s this place in Fresno, CA called The Island Waterpark, and in the park, there’s this thing called the Lazy River. It’s like a body of water that takes you around the entire circumference of the waterpark. You can float all the way through, or you can swim it, or you can even walk it! Whatever you want. It will gently drag you along. Today I am in a place called Bend, Oregon (which is gorgeous by the way!) and there’s a real life “lazy river” here.
It’s free. It’s clean. It’s for everybody. There are families. There are groups of teens and frats, and elderly, and kids. If you have your own innertubes then great. If you don’t, you can rent one for like 5 bucks. And you just float.
For about an hour and a half you can just float down this massive river. It’s AMAZING. And it’s pretty shallow so if you happen to fall out (or you need to pee) or whatever, haha chances are you can just stand up and have plenty of breathing air. I found myself in a double innertube with my love, Andrew. We had our valuables in a “dry bag” (until I messed it up and put wet things in there haha). We each had a beverage in our little cup holders, and some snacks. I brought a book (I’m currently reading Bluefishing by Steve Sims. I LOVE it.) It was so relaxing and so fun. It felt like one of those moments where I’m looking at this beautiful natural wonder, noticing how everyone is happy and carefree. The weather was warm but the water was nice and cool. The love of my life is by my side and….it felt like everything was okay. There was no where else to be in the whole world except in that floaty.
Every now and then we’d come upon a low hanging bridge. And there would be kids jumping off the side of the bridge into the water. And once we heard a security guard saying, “I’ll get you next time!” haha! It was so silly because the kids didn’t care. We surprisingly managed to meet up with friends while IN the river. (It took Andrew having to hold onto a branch of a tree for a little while so we could “wait” in the water (see what I did there? Lol).
It wasn’t until about an hour or so lazily making our way down the river that we come upon a fork in the road (in the water. You know what I mean.). And now we are frantically traveling to paddle over to the left side because that’s how the signs were directing us. We got over. (whew!) But then….I SEE A WATERFALL. The boys knew this was coming up. I did not. They put me in charge of putting everything in the ‘dry bag’ which I did a terrible job at because I was rushing and in surprise mode. I only had a few seconds before we went over the edge! And bam! The water is rushing. And we sped down a mini-waterfall! I was screaming and laughing and getting DRENCHED! And as soon as I was proud of myself for getting through it, I learned that there were FOUR more of those! People were laughing at me from the sides. I lost my big ol hat in the water. I was getting stuck in the rocks. Little kids ran out from the sides to push my innertube back in the middle! It was chaos.
And it was SO much fun!
As soon as I got down to the bottom, we pulled over and got out of the river and ran back up to the start of the waterfalls to go and do it again! It felt so freeing. I felt like I was in a 1950s sitcom. It felt like good, clean, FREE fun. And enjoying it with Andrew was the icing on the cake.
I would love to add to my list of must-sees. Have you been somewhere (anywhere in the world) that just blew your breath away or you just had such a great time that it felt like everything in the world was gonna be alright? Drop me a note and tell me! I want to know!
