Ahhh, as much as I love camping, it is nice to be back home with an actual bed, running water, and a connection to the civilized world. So now I will attempt to give a brief summary of the trip. The plan was to meet at one of our houses at 9 in the am on Thursday. Knowing my friends, I knew there was no way everybody would be there by nine and of course, nobody was on time. My friend and his fiance picked up my brother and I about 8:50 and after loading up his vehicle with our stuff, we were there by 10 after nine, the first ones to arrive. The last person arrived about 10:45 or so. When you are going camping with 13 people, it takes time to get all of the vehicles and coolers loaded up, but after a quick stop for gas, we were on the road by noon.
When we stopped for gas I ran next door to the liquor store to pick up some shooters, winding up with two mini bottles each of vodka, Jack Daniels, and tequila, which we quickly shot down before getting into the car (no, none of the drivers did any, none of us are down with drinking and then driving for 6 hours). Being that I was hungry and I’m a light weight, the one shot of tequila I did gave me a really good buzz, which made for a fun drive. We watched National Lampoon’s Vacation followed by about four episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Long drive short, we finally made it to the campground about 6 in the pm.
Although 13 people were going camping, two of the people would be arriving separately because each of them had to work. One of them arrived about 7:30 or 8. The other one we were not expecting until about 11. Now being in the middle of nowheres, we had very limited cell phone service. In fact, as soon as we drove down the long and winding road to the camp ground, my service went away. One of us did manage to get a text from our friend stating that she was lost. Long story short, four of us wound up driving out to try to find her at about 12:15 am, trying in vain to get contact with her on our phones. Eventually though, she somehow made it to camp.
Friday the plan was to get up early enough to have breakfast and be rafting on the river by 10. Each raft holds 2-3 people and with an odd number of people, that meant we would need to have at least one raft with 3 people. I was away when the decision was made as to who was rafting with who, but I was put in a raft with three people, probably because I was the lightest person there and I suck at paddling. I decided though that while I would have a primary raft I would be in, I would bounce from raft to raft during the six hour trip down the river.
Of course we go through quite a few sets of rapids during the trip and two waterfalls, the first one which is called Sullivan, is about 5 feet high, the second one, which is called Smokey, is about 8 feet high. The river was very high this year which meant that we would be moving fast. For the first fall, I had moved into a raft with the two ladies I took a trip to NYC with earlier this year. As we approached Sullivan, the current took away from the actual falls and into a part of the river that you are not supposed to go down and a part that none of us had never been down. I could see why people didn’t go this way, it had lots of rocks and trees in the river. The trees were on land but the branches would bend down and into the river, meaning that we would have to, in some cases, duck all the way down into our raft to avoid them. Sure, we didn’t HAVE to hit every single one of those trees in that part of the river, but we still did, which, while unintentional, was hilarious.
After that little detour we went through another set of rapids. Our raft hit a really large rock and got stuck at a ninety degree angle. Now I was in the middle of the raft and it pushed me onto my friend’s chest and my head was laying directly on her boob. My other friend got pushed onto me and she was having trouble getting off of me. For a minute, all we were able to do was sit there and laugh.
The rest of the trip down the river was a great time of course. For the final waterfall, I was back in the raft with the couple I originally started with. I was fully expecting a rough time going over this waterfall complete with our raft tipping over, but somehow we managed to make it over fine, although my friend accidentally hit his wife in the hand with his oar.
Friday night we had a great time hanging out around the fire finally going to bed about 4:30 in the morning. Now being a campground, it is always tough getting a good night’s sleep as there are all sorts of people and things making noises. Oh sure, the peaceful sound of the running river is nice but eventually, other things wake you up. Saturday morning many of us were woken to the sound of some fucking asshole blowing off an air horn every few minutes. Even people from the other camps were yelling at the asshole to stop but he kept doing it. Eventually, he and his group left to go rafting. So I told my friends that we should find the air horn and steal it. My friend and I went for a walk and, although I did not expect to find it, she noticed it sitting in the cup holder of a chair. I quickly grabbed it and realized it was pretty much completely full of air. We brought it back to our camp and contemplated what to do with it. A couple of us suggested that we should let the air all out of it and put it back where we found it. So that is what we did and we never had to hear the damn thing again.
Saturday was the fun, hang out and drink day of the trip. We played horseshoes for much of the afternoon and I somehow managed to do something that none of us had ever seen before in all of our years of playing horseshoes up there. My friend brought up a brand new set of horseshoes that he never had even opened. Well midway through the afternoon, I threw it and hit a rather large rock and the damn thing split right the fuck in half. Fortunately though we brought two sets of shoes and we were able to continue playing.
About 5:30 Saturday afternoon, one of the workers at the campground came up and told us that there were severe thunderstorms in the area and we should seek shelter and make sure our camp was secure. We wound up backing up two of the SUVs nearly into each other, opening up the back doors and erecting a tarp in between the two of them so that we could hang out and stay dry. We also set up a tarp between four trees so some of us could stay there and still have a place to make dinner. Well the storm wound up being nothing more than a little bit of thunder and a decent amount of rain and not the hail or heavy winds we expected.
So that is a “brief” summary of our trip. I’m quite certain I left some stuff out but that is your fault, you should have been there if you wanted all of the details.
