- Who has never done this before?
Never, ever.
Right now, it is the 4th of July.
And we are up in Denali National Park,
not far from Mount McKinley,
the tallest mountain in all of North America.
And we're here as a family.
Lincoln and I are here first.
He's just getting out of the car here,
but we are waiting for the girls,
and we're about to go on an epic raft adventure,
like, class 4 rapids, down the--
I think it's the Nenana river,
but, a little scary, a little fun.
It's been a long time since I've been rafting before,
and our kids have never gone before, so.
Anyway, we thought we'd bring you along for the adventure.
This is the place.
Lincoln. You ever been river rafting before?
What are your thoughts on this?
- I don't know.
We were driving past it,
and it looked like it was-- could be cold.
- It does look cold. - It looks cold.
I mean, the water was literally a glacier,
a couple of hours ago. - Yeah.
- Oh, you're not going with us.
You guys are going hiking. (voices overlap)
Are you ready?
You look really warm right now.
- I am really warm right now. - It's not winter.
It's July 4th.
- I know, mom made me wear the jacket.
- Okay. Let's go river rafting.
Bye Leah.
Wow. This is like a shoe wall.
- [Lincoln] Do you have socks?
- Yeah, I have socks.
- Are you ready for this?
- [Lincoln] You don't look ready.
- I am totally ready for this. - Okay. Lincoln.
Tell her what to do. What's the rule?
- What about your shoes?
- No, we don't need to buys shoes.
- No, see, you walk up on the shoe wall
and you pick out shoes
that are one to two size bigger than what you have.
- One to two sizes? - Yeah.
- Oh, is this the part of the day
where we put on our blue suits?
Oh, good job.
It's not my first time, Lauren.
- [Man] It's a girl!
It's a boy!
- You did it.
Blueberries everywhere.
You look so prepared. Oh yeah, there we go.
Pretty good, man. You look tough.
You look ready to conquer the river.
- There's so many of us.
- There's gonna be a lot of people on one raft.
- It's not one raft. - Yeah.
- It is. - No, it's not.
- We're all fitting on it. - There's no way.
There's like 50 people. - Yes, that's it.
It's a 50 person raft.
It's made for 20,
but we're going to squeeze 50 on there, right Claire?
Claire, on a scale to 1 to 10.
How nervous are you?
10 being the most nervous you could possibly--
- Zero.
- [Woman] I'm a zero too! - Zero's not on the scale.
Lincoln, how about you?
- Probably a one, 'cause that's the bottom of the scale.
What are you? - I'm a zero.
Wow. Probably, I'd say a... five.
- Are you really? - Yeah.
- Are you nervous? - I'm nervous for these guys.
I've seen people fly out of the rafts before.
- [Woman] Don't talk about it right now.
- [Lincoln] There's nothing wrong with that.
- I'm trying to get them nervous. That's all.
- Don't get them nervous.
- We'll be fine. We'll be fine.
Hopefully.
I'm a marshmallow.
I'm so squished. Don't push this way, guys.
Lincoln. It's just my suit.
Why doesn't your suit blow up like bubbles?
- [Woman] Yours is blowing up a lot.
- Oh wow. That's nice.
(voices overlap)
- [Lincoln] Maybe it's like no air pockets.
There's no way water can get in.
- That's good. I'm definitely getting in.
Why did the air that came out be so stinky?
Like a sewer. Just kidding, it didn't.
It was actually kind of...stinky.
- No, it wasn't. It smelled good.
I feel like an astronaut.
- [Instructor] First time parachuting?
Who has never done this before?
Never, ever? Remain seated at all times.
Do not distract the driver. He's easily distracted.
And most importantly, do not lick the window.
- The paddle, it's all on the same boat?
- (whispering) She always has lots of questions.
What's going on over here, guys?
Nobody's really talking that much down there.
I feel like everybody's a little nervous,
or they don't know what they signed up for.
They're just, like, quiet and walking.
This is the massive river
that we will be going down,
for the next 45 minutes.
We may or may not fall in the water.
- I'll give you $5 if you go jump in the water right now.
- Well, I want to do it,
but I'd rather go river rafting.
- So, I understand some you've been rafting before.
Some of you haven't, if you have, this might be some review,
but just humor me, okay?
My number one rule today.
Go ahead and stay in the raft.
All right. Great place to be.
That's our safe spot, okay?
We want to hang out there. That's the ideal situation.
There are a bunch of boats.
We just happen to have the smallest one.
We don't have to paddle. They have big paddles.
It's just four of us in one boat.
So that means, when the rapids,
we get the same size rapids as the other people,
because our boat's smaller, it's going to be bigger.
So yeah, it's go time.
We're getting it. I got to get my helmet on.
This is going to be the GoPro.
Audio is probably not great, but hey,
hopefully this camera will last.
Boom. And we are out.
We're on the open water. There's no turning back now, kids.
They're holding on tight.
- [Woman] They are holding on tight.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. Here's some water.
Was that first rapid really scary?
- No. - Are you okay?
- Yes. Fine. Are you okay, dad?
You just, kind of, went closer into the boat
when that wave was right there.
No, I didn't. - [Woman] A little bit.
- No!
(epic music starts)
- That's a good one.
(epic music continues)
Oh yeah. Those are big. That's fun.
Yeah! (laughs)
That was a good one! - That one was good.
- We went big there, guys. That was awesome!
- That was good.
Down on the river, right here,
is probably the biggest one that we're going to hit.
It's class 4, class 3 plus class 4.
There's an actual cable car
that fell down from the tracks,
and it's in the water.
- You'll see it on the bottom left.
- You'll see the cable car.
We're going to hit the biggest rapids.
Okay!
There we go!
(yells and laughs)
That was big!
That's called, the bridge up there?
- [Instructor] Yup, that's the Windy Bridge.
- I touched the bottom.
That was great.
- Are you okay? - Yeah. I touched the bottom.
- Are you freezing? - Huh?
- Are you freezing?
- No, I'm good. It was great.
- Do you want to get in, Claire?
She wants to get in. - Come on in, Claire.
Come on! - Yes, do it.
- Come on, do it.
You don't have to jump as much. Just get in.
This is your time. You gotta go quick.
(voices overlap)
Yeah, see? It's dry.
- It feels weird. - It does.
Now, how do we get in?
We just pop up?
- [Instructor] Okay. It's weird, but this is the way.
The life jacket. You got it?
- Okay. Here we go.
Okay. Here we go. One...
What? - He tried pushing me in.
- Oh, Lincoln, don't push her in.
Head first.
I heard a train. (voices overlap)
I did hear a train back there.
Did you hear a train horn? - No.
- Are you sad you didn't get in, Lincoln?
- Nope.
- Look at them muscles. She's working it.
- It didn't want to come to shore, gosh dang it.
- All right. How do we look?
We survived. We made it down.
It was really fun.
I don't know how much footage we got on the GoPro.
Hopefully the GoPro is rolling,
but we hit some pretty big rapids,
and it's so nice to only have four of us on the boat.
All right, Claire, first time we're rafting,
what did you think? - It's fun, it's really cold.
- Really cold?
- It wasn't as cold, and then you get out,
and then you take this off,
do you need help taking this off?
- Yeah, I do.
Big waves? Bigger than you thought it would be?
Bigger, colder, than you thought it would be?
- Yeah. - Wow. Yeah, I heard. So big.
Turns out this company, New Wave,
that we went with, just barely started a year ago,
right when the pandemic hit.
So this is like their first big year.
That's why the gear is super nice. It's all blue.
The rafts are bright colored,
because everything's new and the guides
have been doing this for years.
So anyway, we had a great time.
If you're ever in Denali, make sure you go river rafting.
It's definitely worth the trip. One of the most fun things.
It doesn't take that long.
I think it's three hours from start to finish.
And I did see a train.
Right as we were coming, I saw the train,
and I'm hoping it comes, right here across this bridge.
So I'm kind of waiting, for the train.
Maybe it's not coming.
I'm going to wait and see.
Are your feet feeling wet?
- My feet are drenched. - Really?
- They are soaked!
- Are they really? - Yeah. They are soaked.
- There must be a hole in you--
- Okay, so the great thing is
we just took off our suits
and our clothes are completely dry.
You probably saw it.
I jumped in the water,
Clare and I both jumped in the water,
and look at this.
Socks, dry. Pants, dry.
It's impressive.
- [Woman] Your head's smaller than Lincoln's, I think.
- What? Is my head smaller than yours?
You've got so much hair.
I mean, that's probably part of it.
- We look good. - Wow. Blueberries.
- There's a big line that runs
all the way around the outside of the raft.
Okay, we call it the OS line.
Do we know what that stands for? Outside Safety.
Maybe someone was thinking of it?
If you're not by someone with a paddle,
you fall in the river,
you're just a few feet away from the raft,
what do you think you're going to do?
You've go to participate, guys. Come on.
What are we going to do?
- [Everybody] Swim. - Thank you.
It's like NASCAR. It's like, I made fun of NASCAR a bunch.
Then I went to it, and I'm like, "that was kind of cool".