The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: August nineteenth, high-lighting America's still wild rivers.

Mind Bender, Scream Machine, Meat Grinder; it's no wonder white-water rapids get roller coaster names. Both offer body-bending contortions and death- defying thrills. And with the surge of rafting, the lines at some popular rivers are long. The Ocoee in Tennessee and the Arkansas in Colorado can thrill 3,000 rafters a day, but with crowds like that, wildlife is replaced by the blur of Zodiacs. Fortunately, North America has many wonderful still wild rivers of which few have heard, let alone navigated. Here are five.

August is prime rafting month on California's Stanislaus River, especially on its North Fork, which churns in Class IV rapids past giant sequoias through the granite gorge of Calavaras Big Trees State Park. 

And the Magpie River in eastern Quebec hurtles down from glacier carved lakes through an immense forest wilderness before it spills into the St. Lawrence River.

The Yampa River, which roars 72 miles through Dinosaur National Monument in southwest Colorado, has carved a colorful maze of slickrock canyons, which once harbored Butch Cassidy.

Another desert river, the Bruneau in Idaho's southeast corner, is a strictly regulated 40-mile stretch of Class III and IV drops through gorgeous gorges reminiscent of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.

Starting in Poplar, North Carolina and ending in Erwin, Tennessee, the Nolichucky is only eight miles long, but it packs plenty of steep rapids into its run through the 2000 foot deep canyon of Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests.

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