Independence Day Adventure

This past Wednesday Thor and I both had the day off for Independence day -so we embarked on a mini-adventure that we've been talking about doing for a long time: biking from our house to float the Clackamas with packrafts, and then biking back home.

We rolled out from the house on our road bikes around 11am - so a niiiice, leisurely start! Our ride out to Estacada was about 20 miles. We carried the rafts, paddles, PFDs and snacks/water in large mesh backpacks that Sheri made (they're great!).

Once we got to our put-in we blew up the rafts, took the wheels off our bikes and tied them onto the fronts of the boats, and set off to float. We had a great time! it was hot, we took a nice lunch break to munch on burritos and do some fishing (we didn't catch anything), and about three hours later we got down to our take out where the the Clackamas flows into the Willamette River.

From there it was 20 miles back home on the bikes (with one stop at Burgerville to split a fresh strawberry smoothie. Yum!). Round trip was ~ 7 hrs, and we had just enough time once we got home to shower, grill a burger, and head downtown to catch the fireworks from the top of my office building (I won tickets in a raffle at work). Overall it was a great, very relaxing day!