"Think with your butt"

White water kayaking is our new favorite sport. We took a three hour lesson this morning and are completely hooked. The first instruction we recieved once we were in the water, was "In white water kayaks, you really have to think with your butt."

These boats are very short (less than 5 feet) and you can manuever them quite easily with your hips and rotating your weight with your backside. We learned how to "eddy" "brace" and "surf." It was so much fun. The Yampa River is pretty low at this point in the summer, so it was a great time to learn how to navigate the rocks. I seemed to manage to ram into everyone in the river, while Ian expertly paddle down the river unscathed. I was also the only person in our group to flip over. It happened while I was trying to "surf" which basically means trying to balance the kayak upstream in the middle of a rapid. Ian surfed several times very well. I flipped on my only attempt.

Our visit to the natural hot springs was spoiled as four hours of fierce thunder and lighting storms rolled through Steamboat.