Jackson Hole Summer Travel & River Trip Blog

Yesterday I was on the phone talking to one of my best friends. Both of us decided to kind of break away from our “normal” lifestyles this summer and travel the country for work. He is literally traveling the country working for a musical touring group stationed out of Branson. I ended up in Jackson Hole Wyoming working for a whitewater rafting company. Yours truly, Dave Hansen. To quote Ben, “This has been the most romantic summer of my life.” And it has been for me too. By romantic we mean in the traditional sense, not necessarily tied to love but as Merriam and Webster say “Marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.” Ben kept asking me about my job, what I do, what it’s like. I told him about cleaning wetsuits, getting people sized into them, booking people on rafting excursions, and the occasional training trips I’m able to get out and row on. Ben asked me if I liked my job and I was like, “How can I not? My job is to make people happy and help them have a good time on the river.”

Yesterday was a particularly good day. I was shuttling some people back from the river to the office. Hopping into the driver’s seat, I hear this voice pipe up from the back as I was buckling my seat belt. “Hey, hey, I have a really important question.” After reassuring his grandparents that it was indeed ok to ask me a question, I prepared myself for some sort of safety question before I started the van. Hunter, the kid, starts again, “Ok it’s really important.” (Then a dramatic pause for effect on his end). All of a sudden he blurts out “Do you like Transformers?!”

Well the only reasonable response for a question like that was “Of course!” And we started talking about Bubblebee and Ironhide. Pretty soon the whole van was confessing to their Trekkie/Sci Fi tendencies. (It was a good year for sci-fi… Star Trek anyone?) Hunter told me that when he grows up he wants to be a Transformer. I told him I thought it was a pretty good goal. Especially for such an adventurer like himself. I mean he floated the Snake River, saw a bunch of eagles, and probably drilled his guide about the benefits of being able to speak Cybertronian. A pretty full morning at the age of six. And after all that’s what all of us Dave Hansen employees and customers want… A little bit of adventure. And it’s an additional bonus if it happens to be “heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.”

-Em

For those of you who love online updates and videos as much as some of us do (cue the Youtube generation) here is something new to watch about the Dave Hansen gang.  The Local News at 8, which covers Eastern Idaho and Western Wyoming, did a news spot on the economy and weather conditions of the Jackson Hole area and how it’s affecting local business, in particular river business.  Two local businesses were featured and Dave Hansen was one of them.  Watch for T-Bone’s harmonica playing and Jason talking about the company and the anticipated summer season.  Way to represent our company guys!  For more info on our guides or on our trips click on the highlighted link. 

You can watch the video here.  

http://www.localnews8.com/global/story.asp?s=10545926

There are many reasons why I love Jackson Wyoming.The first is that though it sees a ton of people coming through the area each year, it never feels like a tourist town.  (Okay, so maybe it feels a little like a tourist town when you’re standing around town square.  But who stands around town square when there are rapids to run?)  The second is that even on dreary rainy days, I still feel like I dropped in on an oil painting.  I may or may not have told the guide I was training with yesterday that I felt like I was in the movie The Notebook.  (I know… I’m a sap.  But how he cued the pelicans to fly overhead just as our group was going by is beyond me.)   The third reason that I love Jackson is that you find family here.

One of my evenings this past week was spent in town square with a random assortment of people playing musical instruments (my instrument was a pair of tap shoes).   A father and his daughter were lingering nearby listening to us when suddenly I recognized them.  They went down on our scenic trip the day before.  They quickly recognized some of us as Dave Hansen-ites.  As it turns out the daughter, Laci, was a fiddle player.  And to top it off they had her fiddle in their car.  So little Laci, who just celebrated her sixth birthday, whipped out Bile Them Cabbage Down with her dad accompanying on guitar.  (Dad just learned guitar this year.)  Laci continued to play for us for another half hour.

Yesterday they swung by the office to say goodbye and we invited them to join some of us for one last musical hoorah up at the Hootenanny.  For those of you unfamiliar with Jackson Hole’s Hootenanny, it is an open mic night that has been going on for twenty years every night at Dornan’s in Moose, Wyoming.  Apparently, the event has even been dropped in on by Dylan and the likes.  Sure enough Laci and her family showed up at the Hoot and favored us with some more fantastic fiddling.  Looking around the crowd-spotting friends old and new-I couldn’t help but feel for the first time since leaving Pennsylvania that this was home.

-Em

First trip of the year for me was June 5^th and with the water a refreshing 39 degrees, I had no qualms about wiggling my way into that wetsuit.  Even when I tried to zip it up and gracefully caught the zipper on my belly, I didn’t even curse.  Just sucked it in and gave a thumbs up to my husband Bud.  Seeing as how it was the first trip of the year, I could not stop smiling.   Yep, onto the bus, into my life-jacket, hop in the boat, listen to our head guide Arne’s safety speech, chat with some German folks and a couple of stalwart 10 year-old rafters, and I am still grinning.  Half way through the trip we float into Gauging Straits, a calm section where people like to swim when the water is warmer (note: much warmer).  One adventurous customer (some might say ‘crazy’) decides to jump in the water by doing a back flip off the bow of the boat.  So I clap and whoop and holler just like the other rafters until somebody yells out, “Your turn, Kelly!”  Haha.  But I have a sure-thing ready that will save me from the freshly melted snow that is the Snake River: Everyone knows guides hate to get wet (I know—it’s weird), so I yell out, “If Arne jumps in, I’ll jump in!” Now see this is where I am reminded that Dave Hansen guides are not just any guides.  It took about .5 seconds after I smugly pronounced my dare for Arne to hop up on the tube, give a little bounce and back he flips right into that 40 degree water.  Say what?!   Nothing left to do but slip off the sunglasses, take a deep breath, and flip myself into the river for the first swim of the year.  Even though I might have screamed once or twice to get back in, it was so awesome I am still smiling just thinking about it two weeks later.  Love the river, no matter how cold it is.

Leo Bridges

First game of the season! Leo Bridges, 1st overall in the ‘43 draft, threw smoke to lead Dave Hansen Whitewater to a 15-1 victory over 4th-Base. Jonathan King chipped in with a home run and a smile and wave to the fans. Good work team! Dave Hansen plays again Friday, June 19th at 7:30 pm. at Mateosky Field versus … of in the shower.  - Will

Working at Dave Hansen Whitewater I’m constantly surprised by my river buds.  Not only can they navigate a boat like nobody’s business, but they’ve got all sorts of hidden tricks up their sleeve.  Arne can speak Mandarin.  Jon is fluent in Spanish.  Jason can cook the best meat you’ll ever eat.  Deuce is a tri-athalon competitor who also speaks Portuguese.  (As I’m writing this I didn’t realize we had such a language savy crew.)  Anyway, add to this the guitar and harmonica playing and there is never a dull moment around these parts.

Last night was exceptionally fun.  I went to a random night of poetry here in Jackson, Wyoming and two of our guides… T-Bone and YT (also known as Bryson to our guests) recited some poems from memory about rivers.  Personal favorite was a quote from A River Runs Through It.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.”

I got to thinking about my own experience on the river.  Call it an additiction, a need, a way to feel connected to something more than myself, but I am haunted by waters.  There is nothing like a current, or a big wave, or seeing the pelicans skim the water on a scenic trip that calms my mind of all its anxious little thoughts.

So here’s to another summer of being haunted by waters.  I’m excited to meet all of you people out there who feel the same way.   Raft On

-Em

Sassy Wetsuit, Wonder Woman

However, our two o’clock crew had a different approach.  They came out of our dressing rooms like a bunch of dancers taking the stage at a Beyonce concert shakin’ their tushes and posing in their saucy booties.

And let me tell you something- I have never seen wetsuits look so good. 

They worked those tight spandex-ed unforgiving pieces of rubber like Tyra (Banks) had just placed them in Jackson for an ANTM* photo shoot. (*For those of you who aren’t as obsessed with the CW as I am, I’m speaking of America’s Next Top Model- a show that tugs at my heartstrings and makes me want to practice my runway walk.)

After crushing it in an impromptu photo shoot in front of the Dave Hansen Bus, the crew loaded up and took off on an excellent whitewater adventure.

2pm trip- I like yo style.

It’s hard not to feel incredibly lucky living alongside the Snake River.  I love Jackson and will always consider it a second home.  But meeting our guests from all over the world, has got me up and wanting to travel again.  Call it the Burnworth wanderlust, but I’m always jazzed about hearing new places to travel to.  Today was no exception.  An awesome group from Washington state came in to talk about their Jackson Hole Whitewater Trip (Yowzers Lunch Counter is huge right now! :)  ) and they thought I was a girl they served on the Peace Corps with.

Turns out they worked in education and wrote proposals to help build the technology and general maintenance of the schools in South Africa.  Pretty cool.  Coincidentally the girl they knew was named Emmy.  (Mine name is Emily.)  No such luck, I was not Emmy.  And, I have not been in the Peace Corps or lived in South Africa.  Though check in a few years and maybe I will be.