Meeting Mrs. Bubbles by Amy Varga

Rafting down the YellowStone river was indescribable. Between the fast moving water, the rapids, and the lazy river, we couldn't sock it all in. After we realized that our first camping ground didn't exist, we traveled another 20 miles making it a grand total of 47 miles total. About 9 miles before our campground we stopped at a boat ramp to take a break. Along the way we met some intense white water rafting kayakers. They warned us that there was a huge wave ahead about 4 miles, "that you can pretty much surf on it." Right as they finished we saw a bunch of kayakers with helmets swing by the rest stop. They kept telling us that if, we wanted to go over it, we had to stay in the middle of the stream and make sure we get some speed. And they added right before we departed, that the wave's name was Mrs. Bubbles.

So here we are, 5 kids in a 15 person army raft getting ready to go over a wave called Mrs. Bubbles. We didn't know what we were against, and the fact that we saw a bunch of people go by with helmets just made matters a little worse. So we pushed off shore, Colter's raft ahead of Janey's, and we braced ourselves for the intense journey ahead of us. As we round one of the many turns of the YellowStone, we heard the sound of thundering water off in the distance and it reminded me of what Clark must have heard right before the Great Falls. You can't see the noise maker but you can definitely hear it.

We rounded the bend to see a bunch of white water kayakers on a little island. We looked to the left of the island and saw a white mess sucking water in and spitting it out. We understood right then why it was called Mrs. Bubbles. We start to gain speed giving everything we had left to give us the momentum to go over Mrs. Bubbles.

The next thing I realized, our boat was split in half and I was looking straight up at Katie and Zack who were standing up by then. When the water and the momentum pushed us up and over the crest of the wave, we received a push from the back of the wave and took flight. We came crashing down hitting the water with such force we all bounced up. We didn't realize what we did until we looked over at the kayaker and they were clapping and chearing us on. If it wasn't Andrew's amazing ruddering talents we would have barrel rolled. From then on we had the confidence to go over every rapid in sight. It was an amazing ending of the first day of rafting.