The plan for this morning was to do nothing.  A plan we successfully achieved with very little effort on our part. The only real task in the plan was to call Orange Torpedo Rafting and setup an afternoon half-day whitewater rafting trip.  One thing I learned about the Pacific Northwest, when the weather report says the daytime high will be 88 degrees like today, they mean the temperature at 4:00 in the afternoon.  The morning temperature is still going to be 60 degrees, so if you want to go whitewater rafting without freezing to death, it's best to book the afternoon trip.
     So I called at 7:00AM when they opened, and booked the tour for the afternoon, and then went back to bed .  Not for too long though, the free breakfast is over at 9:00.  Can't miss out on the free breakfast.  The Fedex tracking information said that Jody's new headset from wingstuff.com was due before noon, so that should give us enough time to install the new headset before leaving for the rafting tour.  I love it when a plan comes together.  The headset came in about 11:30, installed by noon, and off to the whitewater rafting at 12:30.
     Evidently Orange Torpedo Rafting has been around since the 60's, and it had a great TripAdvisor rating.  There were 8 of us on the tour, so we had 2 rafts with 4 persons each and the tourguide.  Our tourguides were great, They were 2 brothers who had grown up around here there whole life, and were attending Oregon State in the winter, and doing rafting tours in the summer.  The morning tour was actually more of a float than whitewater rafting, only Class I and II rapids.  But the afternoon tour was about 3 hours with Class III and even a couple of Class IV rapids.  Our raft had Jody and I, a nice lady my age named Nancy who used to be one of those uphill bicycle people we see all the time, and her teenage granddaughter Alyssa .  We had Brandon as the tourguide, the younger of the brothers.
     The weather had warmed up to the mid 80's as promised, and it was a bright sunny day.  You couldn't ask for better weather.  The ride was great, with some quiet floats, and a few Class I and II rapids, quickly building to a few Class III's  At one of the Class III's, they introduced us to a thing called whitewater surfing.  We had never heard of it, but always willing to try something new, why not.  It turns out they turn the raft back upstream, and paddle into the waves.  When you reach the pocket, you lean forward, and put your weight on the front of the raft, so the bow dips under water, and the rapids roll over the bow continuously until everyone gets soaked.  It sounded crazy, but turned out to be great fun!  The first time Nancy and Alyssa were in the front and got pretty wet.  Then we did it again with Jody and I in the front of the raft, and we really got drenched!  It was awesome!
     When we finished with the surfing, it was time to take on the first Class IV called Nugget Falls .  It was about a 6 ft drop with some huge churning waves at the bottom.  It was exciting to do, and when we were done, we turned around the raft to see what we had just come down.  It looked even scarier from that angle.  After Nugget Falls, we had an opportunity for a little swim, and even though the weather was warm, and the river wasn't that cold, it just wasn't quite warm enough for  a couple of Floridians to think we needed a swim to cool off.
     After  the swim, we pulled into the shore for a snack of yogurt with berries and granola and some ice water.  I left the yogurt to Jody, who said it was great, and stuck to the ice water myself.  After the snack we got back in the rafts and continued our journey through various Class II and III rapids until the final Class IV called the Powerhouse.  It has an 8 ft drop, plus a second drop, with huge waves at the bottom.  There are actually three paths to cross these rapids, and of course, they took the most exciting.  It was great! And had to believe that 3 hours had gone by and that we had traveled 8 miles downriver so quickly .
     As we headed back the original meeting site, we talked about how much fun it all was, and Jody and I expect we will get to do other whitewater rafting on this trip.  We didn't get to take any pictures on this tour, so we had to use some stock footage from TripAdvisor for some of the sites.  By the time we were back on the bike, it was 5:30 and with such limited choices for restaurants in the area, we stuck with the one we went to last night - Wild River Brewery and Pizza.  This time Lasagna for me and some chicken pasta dish for Jody.  Again delicious!
     Tomorrow we head back to the Oregon Coast to a place called Coos Bay, and back to US-101S as we continue our way south.  It's nice having Jody's headset working again so we can continue to talk as we head down the road.  We didn't do many miles on the bike today, and we didn't do many steps on our pedometers, but I suspect our arms and shoulders will be sore in the morning, as we have exercised some muscles by paddling the raft that we haven't exercised in a long time.

18.8 miles today
10,347.3 miles total

0.0 gallons today
249.261 gallons total