We started out on our journey. We had a lot of boys and their leaders. We stopped at a store on the way and got some cheese curd. It was sure good. We traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We slept that first night in a large army tent without a floor.
The next morning we were taken by truck up to the Snake River where we were to begin. The first day there were too many rapids so we floated down the river in rubber rafts. But the next day we were in canoes. Dad and I were in a canoe together. All those years ago I had memorized how to steer a canoe from the descriptions Dad had given when he came home from Explorer river trips. I applied that know-how now. Apparently, the years had caused Dad to forget how to do it, but after a while we got the hang of it. Our guide was a really strong nineteen-year-old man named Darcy Hunt. He had been a football player in high school. In the day, as we went down the river we often encountered rapids. Sometimes Dad and I made it through them, but other times the canoe tipped over and we fell out and into the very cold water. Darcy came a long in his canoe and pulled it up out of the water, dumped the water out of it and helped Dad and I climb back in. He did all this while floating down the river himself and guiding his own canoe. At night around the camp fire Darcy would serenade us with his singing and his guitar. We were all impressed with him.
It was beautiful going down the Snake River and seeing the Tetons in the distance. Everywhere we went was very primitive. Once a moose crossed the river just before we passed by. We watched him scurry up the mountain side as he realized there were people near-by.
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