Normally Lisa authors our blog posts, but I needed to tell this story. As we were making our way from Salt Lake City to Bear Lake in northern Utah we stopped at a roadside picnic area next to Logan River. There is still a lot of snow melt coming down from the mountains and the narrow river was raging just within its banks. As we were making our lunches inside Usain, we noticed another car stopped ahead of us. There were 3 individuals toward the back of it blowing up innertubes, the kind one would find at Walmart. I wondered what they had in mind as it would be crazy to tube down the river in its current state.

I had my lunch made before Lisa so I went down towards the river. By now they had the tubes next to the water and one was getting in behind a tree where the water was somewhat calm. It was about this time several large rocks came down from the mountain side and splashed into the water. This did not seem to deter the potential tubers, which I could now tell were either teenagers or very young adults. By now Lisa had joined up with me with her lunch and I said that I think they are planning to go down the river in the tubes and none of them has a life jacket on.

With her lunch in hand, Lisa immediately went into full mom/teacher mode and rushed over to youngsters. I’m not exactly sure what she said, but they quickly got away from the water. As I caught up I heard Lisa tell them that she wanted to see them live another day and have fun doing something else. They didn’t seem put off at all. They were laughing as they took the tubes back up to their car and left. Later Lisa told me that she didn’t think any of them really wanted to do it but no one wanted to be the first to chicken out. They could now blame “the old lady” that told them to stop.

I was so impressed with Lisa and proud of her for taking charge of the situation and I was embarrassed to have just stood there as 3 people nearly did something incredibly stupid. The world needs more people like Lisa. Truly, not all heroes wear capes.