Like I said, I had a super weekend. We left on Friday night at about 9pm... according to Mapquest, it is 9 hours and 7 minutes from Largo, FL to Ducktown, TN. YEAH RIGHT!!!! We made a freakin bathroom stop by the time we got to Pasco County (which is only about 45 min. away). So needless to say, 9 hrs just did not happen. We stopped in 3 different places to pick people up (including Ellijay, GA! :D) and the funny thing is that each person we picked up, we picked up at a Super Walmart. To quote Beth, "I've never been to so many Walmart's in one day!" The total trip took about 13 hours. There was definitely a lot of driver switching since we drove through the middle of the night.
So we got there Saturday morning, and had some breakfast at Hardees. We went to the camp the rafters were staying at (there were rafters and hikers... the hikers went somewhere else) and separated the stuff for the hikers' backpacks. Then they left and we had some lunch (pizza quesadillas, they were so good!) and went mountain boarding. If you don't know what that is, it's like a skateboard combined with a scooter. A couple of people got hurt, especially Nicole who sprained her knee or twisted it or something... she was limping all weekend :( I tried to go down once and I fell and my whole body weight landed on my right arm. I even heard a crunch! But fortunately nothing happened, I just was in pain for about 15 minutes. Anyway that afternoon we went to a couple "swimming holes". One was Nottely Dam, GA (and we had to go thru NC to get there... so I was in 3 states in about half an hour!). There was a rope swing you could swing from a cliff into the water, or you could just jump. I didn't because there were too many rocks and I didn't think I could clear them. A lot of people did though and it was fun watching them! After that we went to this place back in TN called Greasy Creek. There was a bridge there and the creek was plenty wide and deep that you could jump off the bridge into it. I jumped 3 times! I have it on video too but it's sideways so I need to find a way to fix that. Some people did backflips and crazy stuff. Noah did a handstand! (I have that on video as well.) That was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip, aside from actually rafting. That night we roasted marshmallows and, well, I don't really remember what else we did. Haha. (Oh yeah! Now I remember. I talked to Noah and... Nicole? I forget, but it was a girl... about fainting and throwing up. Hahahaha.)
Sunday was the day we actually went rafting. We went down the Upper and Middle sections of the Ocoee River, which were 5.5 and 6 miles respectively. There were some class 4 and class 5 rapids which I'm sure doesn't tell you a lot but basically it means they were serious business. I have to say that it was a LOT of fun. We had a cool guide too. I had been nervous about the rocks, but the river was actually wider than I envisioned it to be so even though there were probably just as many rocks, they weren't as concentrated as I pictured. And like I said, I did not fall out of the raft. (I came pretty darn close one time though!) Actually, nobody in our raft fell out. We kept having to rescue Michele from almost falling out about 590715 times, haha. People in the other rafts in our group did fall out though but everyone was ok. There was this one rapid we went down backwards which apparently you are highly not supposed to do. Our guide was scared! It was funny. Also funny was when on one of the rapids the guide went flying through the air and landed on me. I figured, "Crap, if our
guide can't stay in the raft then we're in trouble!" Obviously it was fine though. I do have a bruise where someone's paddle hit me in the hand. Oh, and also Noah had this waterproof thing for his video camera so he got a lot of footage of the trip (including the part where the guide got scared of that backwards trip down the rapid... haha). It was awesome and I'd definitely do it again in a minute!!! We made Smores that night and everyone stayed up late playing Mafia. I didn't play because I'm not a big fan.
Monday morning we left :( :( :( But at least that time Brian got to come in the same van with me! But he only lives an hour away from the rafting place. Well anyway it rained a lot that morning and we had to pack all our stuff into the trailer, so the boys got the brilliant idea to put the trailer on the porch of our cabin. But all the girls were like, how the heck are you going to get it down after all our stuff is in there??? It took all 8 of our men but they got it off of there with pretty much no problem! (Which I also have on video. I took a LOT of videos, haha.) Then we met back up with the hikers and we hit the road. We stopped for lunch and most people went to Chick Fil-A or Subway, but a few of us were rebels and went across the street to Fuddruckers. I had a WONDERFUL burger. It was quite large though, so I was full for the next 8 hours or so! We were only 5 minutes late, haha. We watched movies on the way home because the Tan Van has a DVD player. So the road trip was quite cool.
OK, enough with the backstory, here are the pictures!
( You're not reading this for the plot, you're reading this for the illustrations! Duh. )By the way, I don't have any of the actual rafting pics yet, but I'll be sure to post those once I get them developed. I had a waterproof disposable camera with me. Do you know how long it's been since I had to get FILM developed??? Haha. I'm planning to get a picture CD so I can post them online easily.
I hope you all had as awesome of a Labor Day weekend as I did, whatever it was that you did! :) I want to hear all about it.
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