A Bicycle Trip Down The River My river-rafting adventure started on a bicycle. The small daypack I wore carried a hatchet, a saw, some scraps of rope, food, water, a garbage bag bivy sack, a hat, and odds and ends. It weighed less than fifteen pounds total.

It was late May, so I’d stay warm in my homemade bivy, without a sleeping bag. I might wear my hat, and pile up some leaves to sleep on. If the mosquitos were bad, I'd use my headnet, which, I had learned, would also trap warm air around my head, keeping me warmer. I had matches and a lighter, in case I needed a fire in an emergency.

Thirty miles of pedaling had brought me from my home in Traverse City, Michigan, down the backroads to the Baxter Bridge, on the Manistee River. It was almost 10 a.m. I pushed the bicycle into the woods, and rolled it along, lifting it over logs, until I was a mile upstream. Looking around at the trees, I knew this was the place to start the river rafting part of the trip.



Sometimes Adventure Involves A Lot Of Work

The first tree was the biggest, and I almost couldn't drag the ten-foot sections to the river after cutting them. They were perfect, however. Dead, dry-rotted Poplar was always good, because it was like styrofoam inside. It cut easy, and floated well. White Cedar was the best quality, but it was more difficult to find, and to cut.

When I had hauled enough logs to the river, I got into the water and pulled the first two pieces in after me. I tied them together, then tied two long thin poles to them perpendicularly near either end. The other logs were guided, one by one, under these two rails, and tied in place.

By early afternoon I was finished. With the last piece of rope, I tied the raft to shore. I cut a good rafting pole to guide me. I was ready.



Tom Sawyer Day

My first river rafting adventure had involved four of us. I advertised it to my friends as an adventure-disaster, sure to get them wet and cold. Three took the bait. Apart from snacks and water, we took only a hatchet, a small saw, and whatever scraps of rope we could find. It all fit into a small backpack.

We parked near the river and hiked a trail upstream until we were a few miles from the car. The plan was to build a raft, using only dead trees and our scraps of rope. We would then get on it and go rafting back to the car.

It was dubbed "Tom Sawyer Day," and became a much anticipated event among an ever-changing group of participants. Since it was, in equal parts, fun and dangerous, we didn't usually bring beer. Even sober, it was enough of a challenge to keep a thousand-pound pile of logs, with four people on it, from going where it wanted to go. Where it wanted to go inevitably involved pain and cold water, but with each trip I managed to learn a little. Sometimes we even stayed dry.



Sometimes Adventure Involves Math

The first trip, Roland and I were cutting and hauling logs to the river, while Cathy and Leslie cooked hotdogs over a fire. We began to do geometry on a piece of birchbark, trying to figure out how many logs were needed, allowing for the dishonesty of the women's stated weights.

"Cedar weighs 37 pounds per cubic foot," I told Roland, "leaving a lifting capacity of about 27 pounds, given that water is 64 pounds per cubic foot." The girls were laughing at me. "The volume of a cylindrical object is pi times the radius squared, times the length, right?"

Roland agreed. We counted out the logs and began to build the raft. When finished, we had a floating pile of old rotten logs and two frightened women.



Sometimes Adventure Involves Getting Wet

Leslie and Cathy sat on a stump in the middle of the raft. Roland and I stood with our poles, ready to fend off the banks of the river and the overhanging trees. We did this successfully for at least fifteen minutes.

Then, when a low, horizontal tree refused to move, Roland pushed us all off in order to regain his balance. We quickly gave up trying to find the bottom of the river, and swam after the raft. Sputtering and cursing at Roland, the three of us climbed back on.

This first rafting trip was in late April, when the water is still like ice. The sun warmed us, but our feet were almost always in the water. It was bad enough that the raft didn't float very high off the water, but then it began to change shape before our eyes and under our feet.

"It's a square. No wait! It's a parallelagram... Now it's a square again." The girls decided that there was too much geometry in river rafting, so a few minutes later we let the raft drift close to the shore, where they stepped off into the shallow water.

The water, however, wasn't shallow. Once the girls had resurfaced, and climbed up the sandy bank of the river, we waved goodbye. The trail took them to and from the river on their way to the car.

The next time we saw them, Leslie was hiking in her wet bra and panties. This part of the adventure story was crucial to recruiting other young males in the future. The trail went into the forest again, and the girls didn't see us for thirty minutes.



Sometimes Adventure Involves Running

Actually, they saw the raft first, floating quietly down the river by itself. Soon they saw Roland and I, running along the opposite side, trying to catch up. This was because of a tree that stuck out from the bank, low to the water.

We were unable to avoid it, despite our excellent rafting skills, but we thought we could jump over it as the raft passed underneath. It seemed like a reasonable plan at the time. It didn't seem so reasonable when Roland was pushing my face into the sicks in the tree while climbing over me to get to shore.

The raft went on, not noticing our absence. We ran through swamp and woods, pretending this was part of the plan when the girls saw us. The raft came near the riverbank just as we caught up to it. We leapt for it, and we were back in control. More or less.

"How do we get off?" Roland asked, when we were near the car. We decided that we just had to get close to shore and jump. It seemed like a good idea. Roland was still hanging over the river from a tree when I started up the big hill to the car. Tom Sawyer Days went a little smoother after this first one.



Sometimes Adventure Involves Being Pointed At

After pedaling thirty miles and hauling logs for hours, I was tired, but satisfied. It was the best raft yet, and I was soon rafting down the river, under Baxter Bridge, and into the National Forest. I noticed immediately that these rafts float better with only one person on them.

There was just one small group of houses to pass before a long uninhabited stretch. My bicycle stood proudly in the center of the raft, tied in place, with the backpack on the handlebars.

The first guy to see me yelled hello, and pointed me out to his wife. The second didn't know what to say. The Manistee is not a well-traveled river, especially not by bicyclists. A few minutes later I was past the houses. Around the next bend, a whitetail deer saw me and backed off through the cattails.

I floated for hours. Apparently my previous river rafting experience was paying off, because I managed to miss the trees, rocks, riverbanks, and to stay dry. I was even able to sit down and soak up the sun for a minute or two at a time. The latter was always interrupted, of course, by the necessity to jump up and use the pole to avoid something.

In the evening, I stopped, disassembled the raft, and began pushing my bicycle through the woods. A mile later I found a trail, and started pedalling. A mile after that I met two guys on a two-track, with there truck. The ice-cold beer they gave me made them instant friends, so I told them that, no, I wasn't out bicycling. I was river rafting. Then they weren't sure they wanted a new friend, so I traveled on.

Sixty miles of bicycling, miles of pushing the bike through the woods, three hours of log-hauling, and five hours of rafting, all in one day, seemed like a worthy goal, so I decided to just head for home. And the mosquitos were worse than I had anticipated.

Sometime after dark I rolled into the driveway, dropped the bike, and stumbled into the house. I took a shower and answered the phone. It was time to go dancing.



About the author: Steve Gillman has been hiking, biking, floating and adventuring in general for decades. For more of his stories and outdoor advice, you can visit http://www.TheMountainHikingSite.com

It used to be true that a vacation meant getting away from one's day-to-day surroundings for the promise of leisure and relaxation. While that's still true, today's travelers expect more from the promise.

For previous generations, leisure and relaxation often meant being idle. When the World War II generation wanted to get away, some could afford to be pampered, but most did not do much more than eat, drink, and be merry. It was a generation that was content to spend a weekend camping at a local lake, gamble in Las Vegas or Lake Tahoe, or take a cruise in the Caribbean. Leisure activity was to them, essentially, an unheard-of oxymoron.

Not so anymore. According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), baby boomers have, in recent years, embraced greater willingness to travel, and have the resources to do it. But while that much is true, adventure has become a big part of their travel plans.

A recent AARP survey of 1,594 respondents ages 41 to 59 shows that about 55% of boomers consider themselves adventurous, and a whopping 77% feel they are more adventurous than their parents. The survey suggests that huge numbers of seniors are traveling, and that they want to participate in healthy activities when traveling. The baby boomer generation, unlike their parents, is not content to lie around on the beach or get their only exercise playing one-armed bandits.

You can bet that the travel industry is capitalizing on this trend. In fact, a recent relationship between AARP and Travelocity has resulted in Passport, a travel service site aimed at the baby boomer market. There are over 81 million people in the United States 50 or older, which equates to roughly 28% of the U.S. population. It's a segment that controls 67% of the nation's wealth, has more than 750 million dollars in discretionary income, and owns more than 28 trillion dollars in assets. Baby boomers also want to spend that hard-earned money wisely, knowing that self-gratification means eating well, drinking moderately, getting in a good hike or a few good ski runs, and earning a good night's sleep while away from home.

Boomers know how to use the Internet, too, with nearly 40% of them booking their travel on the worldwide web. And, like much of the younger generation, they are looking for ways to streamline their lives, favoring e-commerce sites that allow them to quickly and easily pay for their vacations instantly via credit card, without writing checks or hassling with follow-up phone calls to book tours.

While good diet and exercise is uppermost in the travel plans of baby boomers, they also want intellectual or cultural stimulation, many having identified community heritage, artisan crafts, local theatre, naturalist-led hikes, and wine education as motivations for booking vacations in a given region.

Today's mature travelers, then, are not content to while away their leisure hours idly. They want to learn, feel, see, and do. And they have the desire, tools, and discretionary income to do it.

http://www.articles-galore.com



Russ Beebe is an experienced wine taster and hiking guide who leads naturalist tours in the California wine country. Discover how you can enjoy the quintessential California experience at http://www.californiawinehikes.com

White-water rafting can be one of the most exhilarating experiences of a lifetime. River rafters see breathtaking scenery, get great exercise, and experience terrific adventure. There are great places to go river rafting all over the world, but many of the best rivers for white-water rafting are here in the United States. It’s a good idea to contact a licensed river rafting agency to plan a rafting trip. These agencies, found near most major rivers, provide trained guides and planned routes for rafting rides. Many agencies also provide training for novice river rafters. These services are especially good for people rafting for the first time. River rafting has been a sport for decades. The person generally credited with inventing river rafting is Bill Dvorak. In 1969, Dvorak was the first person issued a river recreation outfitters license when he formed Dvorak Expeditions in Salida, Colorado. Dvorak created many of the safety guidelines and license requirements for equipment used in white-water rafting. He came up with the idea of having guides lead rafting tours. There are many great places to go white-water rafting in the United States. One of the most popular is the American River, which starts in the Sierra Nevada and splits into the North Fork, Middle Fork, and South Fork before converging near Sacramento, CA. The American River provides a wide variety of river rafting experiences, from easy rapids for beginners to difficult stretches navigated by expert rafters. White-water rapids are rated based on their level of difficulty. Water speed, currents, the amount of rocks, and other factors influence the river's rating. The easiest rivers to navigate are Class I; Class VI rivers are considered impossible to run. As equipment has become more advanced, many rivers previously defined as Class IV became Class V, and extremely skilled rafters have begun navigating them safely. River rafting is a fun and challenging sport. A river rafting vacation is perfect for people who love challenges and being in the great outdoors. About the Author River Rafting Info - http://www.e-riverrafting.com/ - provides detailed information on river rafting trips in Washington, Colorado, California and the Grand Canyon, as well as Salmon River in Idaho and Rogue River in Oregon. River Rafting Info is the sister site of Inflatable Boats Web. - http://www.e-inflatableboats.com/

Have you ever gone solo backpacking? If you have, you'll probably agree that it isn't a matter of it being better or worse than backpacking with friends. It's just a different activity altogether. When you go backpacking with others, it's a social event. You enjoy the scenery, feel good hiking the trails, and you get to know people in a different setting than usual. There's usually a lot of talking, and you feel relatively safe as part of a group. It's a good experience. Solo Backpacking Trips When you are alone in the wilderness, it's different. There is a peacefulness that can never be there when you're with others. With nobody to talk to, you stop defining everything and start seeing things more directly. I remember sitting by an alpine lake at 12,000 feet in the Sierra Nevadas, after not seeing anyone for two days. The sun was shining, and the silence was broken only by the clatter of rocks falling from the cliffs above. I was relaxed, and I felt like it was the most beautiful place on earth. It isn't the same when I'm with friends. It's also true that there's an "edge" to solo backpacking. There is nobody there to help you if you run into trouble. The grizzly outside my tent in Wyoming, or the rockslide in front of me in Colorado - these things were felt viscerally. You become very aware of how vulnerable you are. This is an interesting experience - but not a bad one. My favorite aspect of hiking solo, is that all action is more natural. We are social animals without a doubt, but when with others, our decisions and actions are made as part of a group. There is always a little tension involved in balancing all the individual needs. Consider something as simple as resting alongside the trail for ten minutes. Even while it is a needed rest for one, it can be an unatural break in the rhythm for another, and yet a decision must be made to stop or not. On the other hand, decisions flow almost without thought when you are alone. What a wonderful relief from the complications of ordinary life. If you haven't yet tried solo backpacking, get out there and do it. At least go for an over-nighter. How often do you actually spend a day without seeing another person? You'll appreciate the experience. (Watch for my article on solo backpacking tips.) About the Author Steve Gillman is a long-time backpacker, and advocate of ultralight backpacking. His advice and stories can be found at - http://www.TheBackpackingSite.com