Day 16 – Getting Wet, Again!
We all felt much fresher after not drinking so much as the night before which was a good thing as today we were heading an hour up the I40 to Hartford for white water rafting on the Big Pigeon River. We booked ahead of time with Rafting in the Smokies; the price was by far the best. The first company was over $100 per person and as much as I wanted to do it we all thought that was too steep. Rafting in the Smokies however were far cheaper, with a $12 coupon we only paid $34 each, result. They did explain on the phone though that we would only experience class 1 and 2 rapids as there were no plans to open the dam on the controlled river that day.
Before we left I checked in on EPIC, his nest was empty and he was nowhere to be seen, seems my new friend had gone.
The drive up was pretty with nice views of the mountains and within the hour we had made our destination, or so we thought. We filled in our waivers and went to check in; they couldn’t find us on the system. Turned out we were at the wrong place, Doh. Luckily the correct place was on a couple of minutes back up the road, we filled in our waivers for a second time and this time we were able to check in.
Despite our error we had made it in good time so we had a bit of a wait before our 1PM slot. Time went fast though as we admired the views of the awaiting river. The crew got us all geared up and paired up with our guides for the trip Our guide was to be Carver, he was the head of the group and you could tell he loved his job and being on the river.
We also had the weather gods on our side again, turns out the rains that had kept us in the day before had swelled the river so they would be releasing the dam, this would mean we would experience level 1, 2, 3 and 4 rapids, result.
Once aboard the bus they went over the safety spiel on the way to our launch site. The whole crew was good fun and whilst the safety stuff was important they did it with a great sense of humor and by the time we got up to our launch side excited to get in the raft and on the river, the others looked slightly less enthused, maybe a touch apprehensive.
We would be in the last raft on the river as Carver was lead and was keeping an eye on the rafts in front, Carver was a true professional and any apprehension the rest had were soon put at ease as before we entered the river. The ride back to the outpost was 5.5miles and would take around two hours. I loved every minute of it, the rapids were so much fun and the quieter sections of river were relaxing and offered spectacular views. We made stops on the way down to do some surfing; they face you into the flow of the rapids and hold the boat right in it, such fun. A second stop allowed us time to get out of the boat to swim in the river, we also got to jump off the rocks back in.
I had an absolute blast doing this trip and what really topped it off was seeing Sam grinning from ear to ear all the way down, this isn’t really her kinda thing but she loved it, even getting out to swim in the river and jump off the rocks, well done babes I was proud of you. We all agreed it was something we would like to do again. Back at the outpost and on dry land we got showered up and purchased the photo package, $40 split between us for a thumb drive of 16 photos wasn’t too bad.
We were all hungry after the trip down the river and we had fixed a picnic before we left the cabin, with picnic benches by the river this seemed the perfect spot to eat. Potato chips, Mac salad and sub rolls filled with and yet more pulled pork. The $15 I paid for the pork is probably the best $15 ill spend all trip, and we still have more left yet.
The Sat Nav took us back down some back roads to our next destination, an old covered bridge, I wasn’t all that impressed but the girls liked it so that was fine. It was getting on now so we headed back to the cabin via Wal Mart for a few supplies. I was pleased to find EPIC had returned and was back in his spot under the tree.
Back at the cabin we were on hurricane watch with the weather channel, were right on the cusp of the impact zone but leaving early Friday may have to detour our route down to Florida but we should be fine. We started up a hurricane drinking game. Evacuate, Cone and Catastrophic were our words and every time we heard them on the weather channel we had a shot of moonshine. Evacuate was a bad choice, at one point the reporter said “if you are in the impact zone evacuate, evacuate, evacuate” oh man. We also had a bonus round, Irma = a shot of the 100%+ stuff. Thankfully we never heard Irma, good job as even before she had hit land Florence had done some major damage, 3 jars of moonshine and I don’t recall going to bed.