We checked in and I went river rafting. Tie-Dye and Bop wussed out. I looked like a sumo wrestler. I had a suit over my body, water tight, a hood, rubber gloves, mittens, booties, and a life jacket. I went on class 3 and 4 rapids, though everything else were 1s and 2s. The first was the biggest, down four feet. We came up in lots of water in our face. My hat fell off. It came along well. The water comes in, and stays in. Waterproof! It works. The last rapid, Train Wreck, got me a mouthful of water that tasted like slate. We had dinner and we to bed after I got hot and a game of Dominos, of which I modestly won.

Anyway, I went back inside and slept for an hour. Woke up again at 4am and checked again for Northern Lights, but by then dawn was really on the march. At that point it was about 4:15am, and I didn't see any point in sleeping since they were going to wake us by banging on our door at 4:45am so we could get on our bus out across the park to the train station and Visitor's Center. Well, the next thing I knew it was 6:05am, no one had come to wake us up, and the bus was scheduled to LEAVE at 6am! I woke up Arthur and Natan (the latter with some difficulty) and we raced to get our suitcases out to the (we hoped) still waiting bus. Arthur ran ahead to hold the bus if it hadn't already left. It hadn't, but the waiting people were none too happy with us.

On the ride to the train station and Visitor's Center we saw a couple of grizzlies, some Dall's sheep (7 of them!), a spectacular moose, and some caribou. We also saw a whole herd of ptarmigans! There must've been 16 or 20! They were right by the roadside and didn't feel disturbed at all by the bus, but pecked and postured prettily.

We were picked up at the train station by a shuttle which took us to the McKinley Chalet Resort, which is a couple of miles from the Visitor's Center. Our room is vewry nice, although it has zero storage, even in the bathroom, but we're only here for one night, so it's OK. We started to take a little nature walk, but we got separated from Arthur, and by the time we all found each other, we just went to our room to rest and get our laundry ready. There's a laundry room in the Canyon Lodge at the resort.

While we were there it started to rain, the first real rain on the trip. So we stayed inside and Natan beat us at Mexican Dominoes. The skies cleared the minute the game was over, so we collected our clothes for a much needed wash. Unfortunately, we forgot Natan's sweatshirt, which is currently decorated like tie-dye with red strawberry juice, grass, dirt, and some yellow that comes from god-knows-what. Ah well. He'll survive.

We signed Natan up for a 6pm raft trip that gets back around 9:30pm. He was very excited about going, and appeared to be in good hands with his guide, Nate. It was cool that Natan and his guide practically shared a name.

He had a blast, and didn't get back to the lodge until about 9:30pm. He was very cold and somewhat wet. He said that the first rapid, "The Wave", looked very small to begin with, but had a 4-foot drop behind it! They were all drenched. He was wearing a full dry suit with velcro-on mittens and booties, BUT, he was so small that his collar was loose, so water ran from his face down into his suit. In fact, his hat came off in the first rapid and fell in the icy water. They got it back for him, and he put it back on, but he forgot to squeeze out the water first, and MORE water went down into his suit. He reports that his suit was really waterproof -- it kept all that icy water inside, and he had puddles in his booties. near the end of the trip they hit their class 4 rapid, "Train Wreck". He had a wonderful time.

Home to our lodge to finish packing for an early start tomorrow.