Day 21: Climbing and Rappelling Kochmans

Today we were signed up for a canyoneering trip! I would have never had the idea, so thanks to Mandy for the tip.

Despite the triple digits and full sunshine, this morning was quite enjoyable. We were lucky enough to have some high cloud cover and a strong breeze for the first couple hours of the day.

Simon was our kind and helpful guide. We did lots of scrambling, climbing, and adventuring before our two rappels. Simon took us on some random adventure paths to incredible views; since he said our family was so athletic and nailed the climbs so quickly, we had lots of extra time to check out the area. That was cool to hear and was a boost to morale for our kids, who really can and will do anything we have asked of them.

Both boys appeared super nervous for the rappel, but faced the challenge head on and did it. I went first for the first rappel, but then the boys wanted to go first for the second one, quickly overcoming their anxiety.

The sun broke through the clouds just as we were feeling the exhaustion of the morning adventure and were looking forward to wrapping it up. The temperature creeping well into the 90s at this point added to the desire to head back, too.

After the adventure, we went to seek out a shaded picnic place for lunch. Turns out I didn’t do enough research, and after walking nearly a mile in the blazing sun we found a shaded rock to sit under along a river. As we were walking back, Rob noticed the sign for the much closer beach we’d missed earlier. Oops.

Once back at the RV, we continued battling the heat. We hung our huge silver bike cover over one window to block the sun and added another towel on top to block a skylight-like thing on our roof. Rob even tried to hose down the roof to get some evaporative cooling. We started getting more aggressive when we noticed that the temperature between the curtains and the window was about 140. The most effective thing was to turn the engine on and let that A/C run, too. Even with all that, the inside temp still hovered around 90 degrees.

With the high temps (it reached 109 today), at least the boys and I could go to the pool while Rob worked in the afternoon. Rob cooked us some chicken on the griddle outside, and we enjoyed a cucumber to help cool us off while eating our dinner outside again. We followed dinner with another round of microwave s’mores, but all agreed we could have just heated it up in the sunshine. Even at 9 p.m. the outside temperature was still 99 degrees. I drive 10 spots away to the laundry room, feeling lazy, but also sick of the heat.