2016 Rogue River Adventure

Rogue River: A White Water Adventure

July 2016

Dear Family and Friends,

Brother Richard organized a white water rafting trip down the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. The group was brother Joel, sister Barbara, brother Richard, nephew Philip, cousin Linda, Kim, Annee, Therese, Annee's son Joey and me.

On Tuesday, Joel, Philip, Barbara, Linda and I drove in Joel's car down to Grants Pass, Oregon, a trip of about 230 miles. We checked into the Quality Inn there and drove over to the Climate City Brewing Company for craft beers and appetizers. Richard's group arrived a little later (Richard, Kim, Anne, Therese and Joey). We all went to the Wild River Brewing and Pizza Company for dinner.

The next day we drove north on I-5 from Grants Pass to the first exit and took Merlin Road and Galice Road to drive west to a place called Rand where we entered the river at mile post 14.

A ferry service was used to drive the cars to the end of the river trip.

Start of the trip

Tina, who runs RR Outfitters, and our three guides (Joey, Guy and Kyle) were there to meet us. Right away Kyle floated off on the orange "Gear" raft (carrying our camping gear). His early departure meat he can find the better camp site for the evening.

There were two Joeys on this trip: Anne's son and our river guide.

We had 3 large rafts: The "gear" raft (no passengers), the "paddle" raft (usually 5 or 6 passengers who helped by paddling) and the third raft that carried our blue dry-bags, lunch fixings, ice chests and usually 2 or 3 passengers.

We packed our clothes and change of shoes, etc in large blue dry bags which we'd open at night. Things we'd want to access during the day were put in smaller red dry bags. The bags were numbered so we could tell ours from the others.

Philip with the 3 kayaks.

We each wore life vests. Before we started, the vests were cinched onto us with 4 fasteners. The vests had different names written on them so we knew which one was ours. They were each named for different places on the river (mine was "Black Bar").

Joey (Kim's son) and Kim

Joel, Therese, Tina and Tom looking at the Rogue River Outfitters shirts

On the River

Paddle boat

More of the paddle boat

Kayaks and paddle boat

A calm stretch of the Rogue River

Richard, Barbara, Joey-2, Linda, Anne, Joel, Therese, Kyle, Kim, Joey-1, Philip, Tom at Zane Gray's cabin.

Zane Grey purchased this mining claim and cabin from a gold prospector in 1926.

There is a tradition of placing heart shaped rocks at the base of this California Black Oak tree on the Zane Grey property. No one knows how this started but there are 500-1000 heart shaped rocks here.

Barbara and Kim at Zane Grey's cabin.

The property consists of a dozen structures/buildings of varying sizes, a dry stacked rock wall, fruit trees, a wooden drift boat, garden, modern care-taker building, etc. There was a landing strip, too.

More info can be found here: OR_JosephineCounty_GreyZaneCabin.pdf

Joey and Tom in the paddle boat

Joel and Linda in the boat carrying our "dry bags" (luggage)

Joey in his kayak

The Jet Boat/Mail Boat from Gold Beach. We saw 5 or 6 of these. They can only go as far as the Paradise Lodge (the last place we stayed): we saw them only on the very last day of rafting.