I started this adventure in the place that means the world to me that is Moab. It has been my second home and my place of peace since I was six. Every year, it envelopes me into serenity just looking at the landscape. This place has been known for a well-known hiker, ended up having his arm pinned by a rock. Where he was trapped for 127 hours and the only way out was to cut his arm off. Well, my story isn't as extreme as one of those. One of my favorite memories, when I was a kid, was hiking and boating with my dad deep in the canyon. Although it ended in a scare. My dad and I every year went paddling down the Green River. Now, I have been trained since I was seven on a kayak and this was my first big trip. The complete route was over 100 miles that we had to complete in six days. My dad and I launched at Raspberry Gulch with our friends and started our journey with food and a portable toilet. The first three days were complete paradise we camped alongside the river and baked a cake with just the sun. When it was dark, the bats would fly and zip around our campsite and eat the mosquitoes. So far it was amazing. On the fourth day of paddling, we decided to stop and explore some of the hidden gems in the canyon. A couple of them were little nooks or food storages from the tribes that once lived there. Another site might surprise you. Around the late 1800s, a famous outlaw named Butch Cassidy ran and hid in the Canyonlands of Moab. When the police were after him he ran deep into the canyon and was there for years. The stop my dad and I made was at Butch Cassidy's cabin. It was unreal how he built a house and lived in the dry barren desert. During our visit, the wind started to pick up. Normally in the canyon, the wind starts at about 3 pm every day. It heats the canyon walls so much that the warm air rises and the cold air quickly sinks to the bottom. Normally this isn't a problem but when the canyon walls are so narrow the air gets trapped and the wind starts to blow pretty hard. With this, the sand and trees along the banks start making the river have waves. The trees are the most dangerous thing to kayakers in this area they are what's known as Tamis. They have thick trunks that grow out of the water which is hard to tell when the river is high as it was. If any kayaker got tangled or mixed up in it there's a chance you will hit your head and get knocked out or hit it so hard your boat tips and you die. We all started heading on the river paddling and paddling to the nearest campsite. The wind was getting faster and faster from 30 to 50 in an hour. I am paddling with all my might against the 50mph wind my dad at this point was ahead of me and I trailed in the back. All of a sudden my boat's bow caught the wind and it flew my boat towards the Tamis. I was about to hit a big one and I pushed my paddle forward with all my might and grabbed a small one that was in front of it. I pulled out my emergency whistle and blew it three times which means help now. My dad in front pulled his boat to the shore and his friends quickly pulled their boats in and pulled me out just in time before my boat flipped over. The next words out of my dad's mouth were "don't tell mom."
As soon as I got home I told mom about how dad almost killed me and the whole boat crisis. Ooops! Sorry, dad.