Hi.  What a really nice day I’ve had.  Today, a group of 18 folks from down at the church house set off on an adventure.  We left very early … there aren’t many things in this world that I would willingly get up on a Saturday morning at 5:30 am to participate in, but this trip was well worth tossing aside a couple hours of my beauty rest.  Plus, I planned it so it would’ve been kind of crappy for me not to at least show up.

The morning started with the breakfast of champions … Mcdonalds!  Denise almost caused us to be off schedule cause she insisted on going in to eat, but we arrived at our destination with a whole 2 minutes to spare so I shall not complain.   

I won’t bother mentioning the fact that I bugged the ever livin’ daylights out of Ryan, who was driving the church house van, the entire way up the mountain.  By the way Ryan … how are we on gas?  The ride up was fun & entertaining … Ryan drives like he’s driving ms. daisy.  I’m teasing, he did a really great job of getting us there &  back safely, and I am very appreciative that he took time off work to spend the day hanging out with us. 

Brandon was laying down in that seat you see in front of the kids, I think he slept all the way there, thru the entire trip and back.  I am pretty sure he didn’t say 2 words the whole day.

When we arrived at the rafting place … David, Rodney & Amy were there waiting on us.  Marty got us all checked in, paid for and ready to get our gear. 

We piled in a school bus like a bunch sardines and headed a little further up the mountain to be put in the Nantahala River. 

 

From this point on, the pictures you will see are from the raft that me, Haley, Chrisi, Bobbi, Kevin & Caleb were in (and I may I add, we stayed in, not one person came out of our boat)!

Off goes the first boat … the speed racer boat.  It will be the only picture you see of them in the boat on this post because they set sail and we never saw them again!

The 2nd boat with “the boys” and Amy … she did a great job of keeping them all in line.  We didn’t see them much after this point until we got to the check in point way on down stream (btw, the first boat blew right by the check in point as Denise was pointing out to the guide lady screaming at them from the shore line that their boat knew what they were doing … more on that later).

And now the 3rd & final boat was off … that would be me paddling us straight in to the 1st obstacle … a huge rock called “the shark”.  We proudly landed ourselves smack on top of it.  We were off to an excellent start.

Captain Kevin (we only considered mutiny after the 72nd time he purposely turned us around backward in the middle of a rapid) he was quite proud of himself.  Thanks Kevin, you did a great job getting us women folk down the river.

This is our new friend Joseph in the back of that boat.  We saved him when he got knocked overboard & lost his shoe.  We scooped him up along with his shoe & returned him safely back to his boat.  Then they splashed us.  He best be glad he didn’t fall out again … just saying.

The scenery was stunningly beautiful, these pictures do not do the majestic views justice.  Oh, and the nature stuff was pretty cool too.

Bobbi too hottie.

Chrisi & her buddy Caleb.  Caleb thought we might die a couple of times, but he was an incredibly good little trooper today. 

me & Haley at the helm of our little ship.

And last but not least.  The insiders view of the last rapid you go down.   This is not a picture of the sky, it’s a picture of the water coming up over and into our boat.

This would be the rapid in which Ryan & Marty nearly met their untimely demise.  Matt shoved them out of the boat (not really but it sure looked like it in the pictures Ryan has), then laughed at them.  Ryan said his life flashed before his eyes as he was being whirled around in what felt like a washing machine.  Marty said God was punishing him for his wife being smart elicky to the tour guide lady about how they didn’t need to stop.  Denise denies those allegations.  Ryan said he didn’t have a smart elicky wife so there was no reason from him to have to nearly drown over Denise.   All I know is the pictures are funny … I hope Ryan or Marty & Denise will share them with you all. 

To all of you who took your time to go with us today … thank you.  I cannot tell you what a great time I had.  I am so thankful for the moments of fellowship we share.  To the parents who willingly trusted me not to let your child drown, you aren’t very smart thank you too.  They were all very well behaved, although they hid from my camera all day! 

Until next year …

ps: if you would like to keep any of these pictures just right click on them and then click save as picture, it will save it right to your computer. 

me.