By Vivian — My mom talked about how she heard of a place where you could raft on the “fastest moving river in Northern Michigan, the Sturgeon River.” Dad and Mom got kayaks and Nathan and I got tubes. We had to take a large bus with other people to get to the river.

When we got to the river, the bus driver helped us get to the river bank with our stuff. When we got in the river I was the first one in, then Nathan, them my mom, and then lastly my dad. The river was moving fast and there was dead trees, branches, and people in our way. Big surprise, I was the first one to get stuck on a tree. My mom and dad both flipped their kayaks trying to help me, one strange person flipped his tube trying to help, and finally another man helped me and got me free. The river was shallow but that made a lot of the dead trees in the water stick out of the water, that was why I got stuck so many times. I was ricocheting like a ping-pong ball from bank to bank of the river. Because of that, Mom and Nathan went ahead of us and Dad and I were in the back.

The problem with that was each time I got stuck Dad had to stop, and each time he stopped he flipped over. So finally he pulled me, my tube, and his kayak onto a bank where he got the water out of his kayak and told me to hold on to the back of his kayak, where there was a little piece rope and a handle. So then we had smooth sailing — or so we thought … because then it rained hard for the next hour until we reached the end. Right before we reached the end, I was floating on Dad’s left and a slanted tree was up ahead. The bottom of the slanted tree was on our left and I told my dad to turn right so I would not get stuck. We were not turning fast enough and I started yelling “Dad, Dad, DAD!” thankfully the tree was taller than it looked and I just grazed my back, and not much longer we reached the end.

Overall, even with the few glitches, I loved our trip to the Sturgeon River.