When you first move to San Diego, weekends mean spending every minute at the beach. This is especially true in the summer when the days are long, and the ocean is warm. You’ll easily catch yourself going to great lengths to avoid all obligations from Saturday morning sunrise through the Sunday evening sunset. Need to go food shopping for the week? 9PM on Tuesday is free. House a mess? It can wait until the clocks change. Friends’ “inland” wedding? Uh, you get the picture.

The longer you live here though, the more you realize that there is more to summer than the beach. Don’t get me wrong, we keep our weekends clear like Route 35North in the winter. And we still do laundry and food shopping on week nights. But sometimes during those 48 blissful hours we…travel. We leave the coast. Change it up. Do something different. Something new, at least new to us.

I’ve heard people talk about going out to “The River” for some time. For anyone reading this who doesn’t know what that means, we’re talking about the eastern border we share with the Zonie’s. The Colorado River. It’s hot out there. Easily 115° during the day and 90° at night. A typically weekend might start with some early morning wakeboarding– while the sun is lower and the water is calm. After that, a retreat to the AC chilled pad for some breakfast. Next up, filling the coolers for an afternoon on the river. As you set foot back outside – BAM – the heat stops you in your tracks. You immediately jump back into the rushing water to cool off. The next few hours are spent cruising around, tubing, cliff jumping and just floating in the cool waters while the sun bakes overhead. As late afternoon arrives, you’re exhausted and everyone heads back for a siesta. At some point, when it’s finally dark, beers start to crack & a late dinner follows. Eventually, you find yourself outside in the the moonlit sky, enjoying the heat, jumping back in the river and preparing to do it all over again the next day. At least this is what “we heard”…

We pulled up Friday night around 11PM, and everyone was outside. Within 10 minutes, Dana & I were in our bathing suits, hanging on to the side of Cody’s lifted golf cart driving the 100yards to the water. As we jumped off the dock into the black nighttime waters, we were quickly swept downstream. Someone mentioned that they open the upper Dam at night and the currents can be sketchy. After a few more jumps – each time drying off within what seemed like minutes – we made our way back to the porch, with everyone slowly fading into their small corner of the packed house. Good times. The pics tell the rest…