Day Two of vacation in the Wallowa Valley, Oregon. The girls had quite the adventure! I was lucky enough to get some good pictures of the debacle. We have deemed this the Big Paddle Boat Pickle of 2016.

After an elegant breakfast, we decided to go to Joseph for the day. Joseph is the more tourist-oriented town. We looked around at a few shops, and then headed for the state park which has a lot of activities available. The girls wanted to rent a paddle boat (pedal boat). Janie and I would stay on shore and relax.

 

The girls took off with Leslie and Emma pedaling and Sarah sitting in the back.

 

 

 

 

 

A short way from the marina there was a log and buoy boom. They paddled out around it so they were outside of the protected marina. At that point they decided to rest and chat.

 

About 5 minutes later they looked up and realized they had been blown quite away out from the boom. They started pedaling back toward shore, but the more they peddled, the further out they drifted.

 

When exhaustion set in, they tried switching positions, which only resulted in unbalancing the boat, causing the back to fill with water. They didn’t realize that this in turn raised the paddle partly out of the water reducing their power.

For quite a while it was not obvious from shore that they were having trouble. Being responsible for the girls, Leslie began to get quite concerned. She began waving. I thought she was letting us know they were having fun, but Janie began to sense something was wrong. When Leslie took off her bright orange life jacket and started waving it, I started paying attention to Janie’s concerns. I went down on the dock and asked some people who were getting ready to head out in a boat to check on them.

Meanwhile, Leslie had gotten the attention of some nearby boaters, and Janie got the attention of one of the attendants, who got ready to head out to tow them in. The boaters stayed with the girls until the attendant arrived. In the end they came in safe and sound although the boat was half full of water.

They were relieved but wet, exhausted and embarrassed. No one was interested in paddle boating for the rest of the trip.

 

After the Big Paddle Boat Pickle, we went for a round of miniature golf at a pretty dilapidated course. We were sunburned and tired and ready for lunch, so we ate at a very good brew pub.

 

 

Rested and fed, we also stopped by Chief Joseph’s monument.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By then, it was late in the day and we and decided to pick up some sandwiches to bring back to the house for dinner. We took naps and spent the evening playing Cranium. We were all ready to retire early by the end of the game.