Family Folklore by Michaela Allen

Last summer, my family went to Flaming Gorge. Not just my immediate family, all my cousins and aunts and uncles on my dad’s side of the family. When we were there one of the days we went cliff jumping. The place we wanted to cliff jump was not by where we were camping. We had to drive in the boat for so long it felt like it took all day! As we were driving in the boats, we came to a place where you had to drive really slowly because it was narrow and close to the shore, and because there are a lot of boats around there. We had to drive slowly enough that the boat wouldn’t have a wake. We were going so slow it was like we weren’t even moving at all. It took like a million hours to get to a part where could drive at a normal speed. Once we were at normal speed again it didn’t take so long to get to our destination.
We jumped off the boats and the water was so cold our toes started turning blue. We swam to the huge rocks that were so high that it hurt my neck to look up at them. We started climbing up the side of the rocky cliff things and it was really steep and slippery to climb up that we could fall off as easily as an apple could fall out of a tree. Two of my cousins and I did not want to jump off the really really high part because it was extremely high. So we jumped off into a lower spot, but even that spot was taller than a four story house. Once we were where we wanted to jump, I couldn’t get myself to jump. I was so scared I thought I would die a painful death if I went. Both my cousins had to go before I was convinced to jump down into the lake. It hurt a little when I hit the water and I was soon surrounded by icy cold blue-green water. We swam back up, and jumped a few more times, each time less scary than the next.
We swam back to the boat, which felt really far away to swim, and got on a boat to watch other people jump. The braver, older people, like my older cousins and uncles, went up much higher to jump. There was a rope they grabbed onto and swung off. It was so scary just to watch. I do not regret not trying it at all because a couple people got hurt, but not seriously. My sister got caught on the rope and so she was later letting go of the rope and everyone was screaming at her to let go. She was fine besides that she got a really bad rope burn. The rope burn was so red it was the color of a ripe tomato. As we sat on the boat we were freezing and shivering from the cold water that we’d been in. When we started driving again, it got even colder from the wind whipping at us.
We kept driving through the lake until we found a good beach to eat lunch. It felt like it took even longer to get anywhere then the first time, because this time I was cold, wet, and hungry. It was much warmer by the time we got to the beach because we were dryer and the sun was out. I was so hungry that I could’ve eaten an elephant, a tiger, and three snakes and still be hungry for desert. We sat on big rocks and ate lunch in the sun. After we ate we walked around on the smooth, sandy beach and waded out in the lake. It was the best day ever, of the best vacation ever, and there was still so much more of the day for more exciting fun back at the campsite.