We're home

Ten family members and one friend got together and we all went on a white water rafting trip on July 10, 2009 in North Carolina & Tennessee. The river we rafted on was called the Nolichucky River Gorge and the rapids were Class IV rapids. To explain the complexity of the rapids and so you understand what Class IV rapids are the guide used this as an example:
Class I is like being in your bathtub and Class VI is going over Niagara Falls. We plan on doing some Class V rapids, but I don't think I'll ever attempt Class VI. I'll leave those to Zac.

L-R: Me, Jimmy, Beth, Thalia, Zac, Sharon, Scott, Megan
and Brandon is being held down in front.

These are the rafters right before we got our rafting gear of life jackets, helmets & paddles. The rafts only held six people plus the guide, so three of us had to split off into another raft. To make it more fun for the others, Jimmy & I volunteered to go into another raft and we took Brandon with us because his mom had given me strict instructions about his safety since this was his first rafting trip ever. Brandon is the one being pulled down in the center of the picture above. He's my 14 year old grandson...the baby and youngest grandchild. Thalia is holding him down and she's 16 and the next youngest grandchild.

L-R: Zac, Brandon, Me, Beth, Thalia, Sharon, Megan, Scott

Jimmy is taking this picture because he's the one missing in the picture. I only put this one up here so I would know where to find the phone number of the rafting company for future use. The guides were very well trained in water rescue, emergency care and resuscitation and very nice and made the journey down the rapids very enjoyable and exciting. The guides worked very well together in keeping everyone safe. Not all rafters were in rafts, some chose to use one man duckies and were basically on their own except for the guidance of the guides shouting out directions to them. Did I mention that the guides were in charge of keeping 49 rafters & duckies safe in our day long party?

Scott Walker & Reva Hatcher

Scott was the first and I think only member of our family who was thrown out of his raft by the river rapids...some family members threw other family members out in calmer waters and with the okay from their guide. Scott didn't break any bones thankfully and managed to get himself right back into the raft as quickly as possible. Reva & Brian didn't go rafting with us because of health problems, but instead they explored the area by motorcycle and found us a nice family restaurant to eat in after our day of rafting.

Brian & Brandon in "Old Smoky"

We all rode our bikes except for Megan, Beth & Thalia who came by car. We took 6 bikes and two of us had a rider on board. Brian had Reva and I had Brandon on the back of my bike. The other bike riders were Jimmy, Scott, Zac & Sharon.

We had to paddle harder, ha ha, because we had only 4 in our raft...Jimmy, Brandon, Me and the guide. I think we had it easier really, because our raft didn't sink as low into the water as the other rafts who had 7 people on board and we sort of glided over the rapids easier. Our guide was a great kid.

In this raft was the rest of our family: Scott, Zac, Beth, Sharon, Thalia, Megan and of course their guide in the back.

Riding the rapids was an all day trip that started at 10:00 a.m. They served lunch on the rocks at the halfway point in our trip, and as far as I could tell, the lunch came in the same way we did, by raft. All in all we had a wonderful rafting experience even though I did get bumped around a little and received some minor scrapes & bruises, but I didn't get thrown OUT of the raft!

Zac entertained us with his motorcycle stunt riding on the way home and scared his mother half to death. I think he is destined to become a motorcycle stunt driver.