Summer may be a season but it’s also an attitude.

Grabbing lunch is suddenly transformed to more than a meal but an experience with al fresco dining or an impromptu picnic. Forget sitting inside or at your kitchen counter – you want to be outside enjoying the sun and the fresh air.

Summer changes our outlook to where we want to get outdoors, try new things, and make every hour of sunshine count.

The question is, how do we kick off summer in the best way possible? Is it an ice cream cone?  A day at the pool?  Perhaps an outdoor concert with a picnic and your best friends?

My husband Jay and I decided to kick off our summer with a white water rafting trip with All Season’s Adventures.

What better way to enjoy a summer day than hot sun, cold water and an experienced river guide named KaiLin?

We drove about 45 minutes from Park City on Highway 89 to the Weber River where All Seasons Adventures puts in their rafts. (Transportation is available for Deer Valley guests, of course.)

After greeting our guide, securing our life jackets, and listening to a safety lesson, we were ready to head out on the river. Our trip was about 2 1/2 hours of rafting down the Weber River. Since this is a Class II whitewater river, we were engaged and active paddlers with just the right amount of excitement on the river!

The Weber river trip kept our interest because there are three distinct parts of the trip. During the farmland portion, we returned the gaze of a few horses as we viewed working farms as well as some vintage farm equipment from our vantage point on the river.

After passing a more industrial section, we were treated to the gorgeous red rock mountain views that Utah is famous for. We passed rock arches and rock formations called “Devil’s Slide.”

We had the chance to get a little wet as we hit a few rapids.

We had to duck under a low bridge.

Our guide had us spinning through waterfalls and navigating a “rock garden” in our raft. With her seven years experience on the water, she had no problem anticipating the flow of water around bends, over rocks and under trees.

With some directions like, “Pull two” or “backwards one” she skillfully had us negotiating our river journey with ease.

You can see by the smiles on our faces that we had a great time.

It’s now official: it’s summertime!

For more information on whitewater rafting with with All Season’s Adventures, click here.