2021 Glacier National Park: July 2nd - Whitewater rafting the flathead middle fork river

 We headed out to the Great Northern Rafting Resort, which ran multiple whitewater rafting trips. On the way there, Bowen kept telling Boen that he promised that Boen would like it. We got fitted with life jackets, water shoes for the adults, and everyone had plenty of sunscreen on.

Our guide was Marcy, and we were assigned a boat with only 6 rafters, so we would be the last to enter all rapids since we had room to pick up anyone who fell off. I knew when signing up that any rafting trips that would take kids as young as 6 years old would be pretty tame, but I don't think Bowen understood how tame it was to be.

Once on the boat, Bowen had asked for an oar, but I think he found the prospect of having to paddle much less exciting than the concept of being able to paddle, and he quickly got bored, as even the white water parts weren't particularly exciting, especially after doing class 4 in a kayak two years ago. Nevertheless, it was Boen and Xiaoqin's first time on a white water trip, and Boen enjoyed bouncing up and down in the raft. Marcy had to implore Bowen to hang on to the handles on the raft several times. I sympathized with her because Bowen didn't feel the need.

Near the end of the trip, on some flat water, I jumped in the water upon Marcy's prompting and took a swim. So did Bowen and Boen, and the end of the trip was marked by anti-climatic beaching. I had wanted a white water trip to make an easy day and to take off some of the heat, but unfortunately, it had been a little bit too easy.

Xiaoqin had picked out a restaurant with a great open-faced steak sandwich, and after that we had Huckleberry Ice Cream downtown Whitefish, which was great and would be the best ice cream during the entire trip.

I looked in the book to see what hikes we could do on Sunday, but everything was a long drive. We ended up deciding on the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness, since that was an easy hike, had the shortest drive, and while I had originally thought it would be a great hike to do on the way back to Spokane, I realized that I didn't want to add time pressure on what would be a long driving day.