Favorite Hobbies - River Rafting

One of my favorite hobbies is river rafting. I have always lived near a river or creek, and since I was a kid I loved to go tubing or rafting down the river. I think every kid loves to go tubing or rafting. I have gone many times, nearly every summer of my life. Usually I would just go on tubes. We could find tubes at a random tire repair shop. Often they just had inner tubes for sale that many of the kids in town would just go buy to go tubing. The creek was fine to tube on as a kid. It is not very large or fast, but felt like it was when I was younger. Now the creek by my house is kind of boring to tube, but there are bigger rivers around to raft and tube on also. One river rafting trip I once went on lasted a week. We rafted down the green river in Utah for about seventy-five miles. It lasted nearly a week. The whole time the river was surrounded by towering cliffs, around one-hundred feet straight up. Each night strong winds would come rushing down the canyon. We had to unpack and sleep on sandbars, often with the wind trying to blow all of our rafts and equipment away. The green river is kind of slow and does not have many rapids, if any at all. It is just a kind of relaxing river run. There is always the possibility of flash floods though, that could come at night. It could rain anywhere miles and miles upstream and we could still end up having a flashflood where we were at. We always tried to find a sandbar as high as we could, so that we would not be washed out if a flashflood came. Fortunately none ever came. It might have been fun though, to have a flashflood come. It would have added a little more excitement to our trips and give us something more to talk about. I have not ever really gone white water rafting, although I would really like to. It looks pretty fun. I have just done the slower rivers. They are kind of nice too though. It is nice to be able to just sit back and relax as you float down the river. I went kayaking for the first time this last summer. That is a hobby I really enjoy and would like to start doing more. I went with a large group, and was on a two man kayak. It was fun though, much more fun than just tubing or rafting. You have a lot more control in a kayak, and you can speed up and move around much quicker. It can move much faster than a tube or a raft can. We only kayaked for an hour or so, but I really want to go again. I need to get my own kayak at the online hobby store and more so I can go as often as I like. Anyway, river rafting is one of my favorite hobbies for many reasons. I do not know why. Maybe it is just because I like to be in the water so much. It gets so hot in the summer sometimes, even in Utah, and it is nice just to have something to do to cool off. I like that it is an activity that I can do for free too. After I have my tubes, rafts, or kayaks, it is something I can do over and over again without a cost for anything, except the gas to drive up the canyon. Peter Jay is the Owner/President and CEO of Variety Access - Your online hobby store and more. For more information about hobbies, hobby products, or Variety Access, go to www.VarietyAccess.com.