Maybe next time

There is one thing that I heard about that I HAD to do when I moved to Arizona and that was to tube down the Salt River. Therefore, when one of my bestest friends came into town this weekend, I figured that this would be such the opportunity to do so! I was even able to get a Saturday off! ( I know. I was pretty shocked myself!)

So Saturday morning came and we got all lathered up in our Suntan lotion (3 hrs floating down a river= budding cancer cells right?!) Granted we did sleep in a bit and kinda took our time- but we had all the time in the world right?! We stopped by Subway to get some lunch and headed on down the road.


You see, the place where you start floating is pretty far away from most places, but since I live super far in the boondocks as well, turns out that its right down the road from us! After about 10 minutes of driving, we saw the building where you rent tubes and made our way into the left turn lane. However, we saw some activity up ahead. Park Ranger activity that is. They were putting up orange cones and wouldn't allow us to turn left. I pulled over and sent one of my friends whom was shall call "my personal runner" over to ask the kind man in the orange vest, what was going on. (She would have also received 20 dollars had she gotten a date out of it as well!)

The news was bleak. Not only did she not get a date, the parking lot was full. But he said that if we could find another spot down the road we could walk back and get our tubes, get on the bus that takes us up the river and then be on our way. So we drove past all the "no parking anytime" signs, along the winding roads (where Jeff and I went off roading) until we decided that there was no way we were going to park 10 miles away. I flipped around and we decided that we would try the other direction. We drove past the nice man in the orange vest again, and about 1/2 mile the other way, the "No Parking' signs stopped. "SWEET!" We were in the clear and not far away either. There was a little bit of a hesitation in the back of my mind since I was wondering why we were the only ones parking there. Had no one else seen this stretch of road? But I figured it was their problem because I was ready to TUBE!



We got all of our stuff out of the car and started on our way, when sure enough a trooper pulled up with his lights flashing. He roles down the window and to my "Hello" and said, "If you park here to go tubing, I with tow your car in a minute!" Wo Buddy! Was the harsh language needed? A simple "You cant park here" would have sufficed. Now, I could see if we were hoodlums and giving attitude- but come on... do we look like hoodlums?





(I opted to post a picture in these clothes vs in our swimming suits! You can thank me later!)




So I said, "I'm sorry. I thought we could since there are no "No Parking" signs here" and to that he had the silliest response ever- "Even though there are no 'No Parking' signs here, you still cant park here." Really?! Isnt that the purpose of having a "No Parking" Sign? Maybe they should invest in more signs. Because that just seems wrong. His tone of voice did soften a bit as he told us to come back in 20 min and it would re-open. So we took a little drive and came back after about 19 minutes. (We didnt want to be late you see.) However, only 1 thing had changed. There were more cars waiting around to get in. The Sold out sign seemed to mock us each time we passed it. After about 40 minutes of waiting, we gave up and just went swimming at our pool. (Even though, we were going to have a pool party that night! We were prepared to have wrinkled fingers and green hair!)



So...Here I am- 2 yrs + in Arizona and still no Salt River Tubing experience yet. Oh well- One day! We still had a grand ole time together though- and really- thats all that matters! Right?!


If any of you are looking for charities to give to- I think the Usuary Park would be a great place to donate- they need money for more signs!