Fun in the Kettle River

My sister Donna and I loved to  ride the current from up the Kettle River  down to our beach.

When we were in junior  high, we  lived in a  little log cabin on 17 acres that stretched between HWY 395 and the Kettle River just north of the Barstow store.  

We'd head out back bare-footed.  You went behind the cabin and past mama's little garden, with cantaloupes  and  round little watermelons ripping on the vine.

Then down an old road, sandy and full of weeds, toward the north end of  our property on the Kettle River. 

The road  narrowed into a trail. Same sand, same weeds, same bare feet.

We'd cut though a deer bed . Ducking low and crouching  to get under the pine branches and down into  the bed.

We'd cool off for awhile, taking in a deer's eye view of the world- through the branches out to the river. 

 Then we'd run the rest of the way, bounding from rock to rock, down to the  river bank. It was outlined with big wide rocks and boulders, baking in the sun. We jumped from hot rock to hot rock as fast as we could, to where the river makes a wide curving sweep.

We'd  wade into the  ice cold, shallow water of the river, rushing  against our ankles and at about mid-calf we'd drop down into the river and let the current carry us to the middle of river. 

Donna and I would  float, practice our synchronized swimming. Wave at the tourists from Canada driving down the hiway.

The current  pulled us along,  past high sandy river banks and the curve of the highway and pine trees to a rock wall where the water edded in a deep pool on the other side of the river from our beach.

If you ended up on the wrong side of the river you'd have to swim through a pretty strong fast current to get home.

More than likely, we'd end up just downriver, toward the neighbor's vacation cabin. The beach was a narrow shallow rocky strip of shoreline. We would tiptoe barefooted home.