Tubing Down the River

Several years ago when I was pregnant with Ezra, our family took a tubing trip down a river in Northern Michigan. It was a little longer than we expected, but we had such a blast! It’s SO MUCH FUN to float down the river and have absolutely nothing else to do – no phone, no book…NOTHING but the river, the animals around and the people floating with us.

I’ve always wanted to do it again, but most rental places around here don’t allow children under two on the tubes/kayaks. And since we’ve had a child under two for most of the last 6 years, that has always been a challenge.

Last week when I took the kids on a hike, I stumbled upon a park that has a canoe/kayak/tube launch. I texted Theo and told him we needed to buy some tubes so we could tube down the river as a family!

Lo and behold, Aldi had giant inflatable tubes for sale that week as well as some life jackets for the kiddos. We bought four tubes, three life jackets and headed to the park!

Tera’s swimsuit:

Kiah’s swimsuit:

Ezra’s swimsuit:

My favorite small shop to get swimsuits from is SwimZip!

Of course, tubing down the river wasn’t that simple. We had to drive two vehicles to the end point, park one vehicle there and then drive the other vehicle to the starting point. We then had to blow up the tubes. By the time we were all ready to get in the river, it was past 11 and we knew we would be cutting it close to lunch. For some reason we assumed that our trip would take around an hour– it was only a few miles down the river, after all! (<—- This is called foreshadowing.)

Just as we were getting ready to get in the river, a canoe rental company showed up- with two buses full of people and their canoes/kayaks! So here we were trying to get our three small children onto floating tubes while all around us, people are throwing their kayaks in the water and jumping in. It was a little bit of a rough start. We felt like everyone was watching the family circus and rolling their eyes. One tube with a child on it started floating out into the river and everyone watched in horror as said child clung on for dear life. Of course, if we had only known how slowly the river actually moved, we would not have been the least bit concerned. But at that point, it was all completely unknown.

We finally got ourselves all situated and figured out how to float without losing the kids and that was when I got a phone call from my doctor. We had to “pull over” on the side while I talked to the Dr, and after 15 minutes we were finally ready to get underway! Then, Theo got a phone call from his brother. Again, we pulled over to stop and talk on the phone for a few minutes. At this point, we had been on the river for 45 minutes and had barely covered any ground, so we declared no more phone calls and time to just relax and enjoy the river!

After our rough start, we finally got the hang of riding the tubes down the river. Theo found a rope and tied the tubes all together so that we wouldn’t float apart. The river was very slow moving, and although there were a few points of “rapids” they were very, very shallow and easy to navigate. Our one big regret was that we didn’t have any paddles and so we could only move at the rate of the river- which was VERY slow.

Spending that afternoon on the river with my family was AMAZING. It was fresh air, sunshine and no reminders of COVID or the current state of Theo’s job. It was laughter and snacks and laughing and laughing at Tera when she got stuck on tree branch. It was smiling at the idea of my husband riding a giant rainbow unicorn down a little river. It was family memories and teaching our kids how to be outside and be brave and do things that are fun even if a little bit unconventional. It was smiling at other canoe and kayak goers, who either thought what we were doing was awesome or stupid….or maybe a little bit of both!

We learned a lot on our first run down the river. First, we learned that three miles as a family in four giant Aldi animal tubes will actually take 4 hours. We learned that we should for sure pack a lunch, although we were very thankful that we brought snacks! We learned that a paddle would come in really handy. We learned that our family LOVES to be outside and it doesn’t take a fancy vacation to find fun local spots! We learned that getting outside with our kids and putting the phones away and just being present is the greatest gift and the best stress reliever!