Child and I went canoeing today, along with my cousin and three of my siblings. It was a lot of fun--I borrowed the van and trailer from my parents, we loaded the canoes, and drove several miles up the Canyon. There's a lot of construction on the Canyon road right now, which made things a little interesting, and we had to slid the two canoes down a steep, 30 foot gravel embankment to the railroad tracks below. From there, it was a short bushwhack to the river, and we managed to board the canoes without tipping over.

The trip down was a lot of fun, although about five minutes from the end we hit a reef and capsized. The scurvy dogs serving before the mast abandoned ship despite my threats of taking the cat o' nine tails to them, and one floated downstream while the other struck for the far shore. Eventually I got the canoe righted and dragged to shore, and eventually resumed our trip with the one able-bodied seaman who returned. The mutinous first mate who floated downstream protested that she had been recovering one of the lost sweeps, so she was spared a keel-hauling. That, and I'm getting married to her in a month and a half...