Well we just got back from a water tubing trip that was just a tad too dangerous. I mean we all survived - just with lots of bumps, scrapes, bruises, rashes, tears (the kind that come out of your eyes AND the kind that can expose more than you would care to from your swimming suit), lots of memories too.
I'll run you through the whole adventure - it was an adventure.
I was looking for things to do with the kids this summer. One thing we've done in the past that the kids have really enjoyed is going white water river rafting. I was looking into that, and of course, once you get a guide involved it gets quite expensive. So I thought longingly on that tubing trip I took when I was 12 on a river in Northern California. It was kind of fun and pretty.
Turns out there are all sorts of tubing trips not too far from where my brother Paul moved. Paul moved in there around 6 months ago, and we haven't visited yet, so this seemed like an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone -- as it were. Also, I figured it would give the cousins a chance to interact more.
Paul's kids are all quite a bit younger than mine, but you know - good to get cousins together. Paul thought going was a dandy idea and we agreed to do the tubing on a Saturday after his kids got out of school.
It was a nice trip on out to Townsend Tennessee from Oak Ridge. It took less than an hour. Townsend borders right along the national forest. It's a long skinny town, with the mountains on one side and a river on the other. It also had half a dozen tubing rental places. Places that advertised all day tubing for just $8 - unlimited shuttle.
Paul brought his son Christopher and daughter Aubrey. I brought Levi, Katie and Sonora. Julie is in Turkey, so she couldn't come. It also happened to be Levi's 17th birthday. Here is a picture of the rafting place we went to. It was a professional enough place. Clean, good staff, tee shirts, a place to eat, nice shuttles. As we got ready to go, I asked Levi if he really wanted to go down the river wearing glasses, he took off his glasses and put them in his shoe in the car. Turned out to be a pretty good move.When we got in there, they mentioned that the river was up quite a bit and recommended everyone where life jackets. One of the people at the register spoke with an odd accent. Sonora practiced some Russian on her, and turns out she was Russian.
7 people fit in a van with tubes and there were 7 of us - so that worked out nice. They dropped us off just before the national park started - guess it's illegal for them to operate in the park.
We walked down a bank and looked at the river. It had a view ripples to it, but looked nice. The picture shown is actually the slowest part of the river, nice, tranquil, peaceful - maybe a little boring. Anyway - we got in the water and it was COLD! If you sat in the tube right, very little of you actually got wet. We figured we wouldn't have a lot of splashing fights on the way down.
About 2 minutes into it, we got to the first set of rapids. They were fun, a little exciting but nothing spectacular. One little problem, Paul hit a rock just the wrong way with his tube and just plain popped it. That left me with 6 kids, two of whom weren't the best swimmers and were quite young. Great....
Well Paul ran back up the bank to hitch a ride back to the tubing place, and we just kept going. As we went around a bend, we saw several tubes out of the water and wondered why? Well I was trying to keep even with the kids in front and got off on the side. I ended hitting the side of a tree on the bank and got knocked off my tube. No big deal except my tube got stuck on the tree and the current was too strong for me to swim back to it. Levi was coming down and I yelled at him to knock my tube loose. Levi got knocked off his tube too by the same tree but did rescue my tube.
Around this time I realize that Aubrey is screaming and that there are people on the bank tending to a person with a really banged up and bleeding knee. Aubrey lost her shoe and was really upset. She was sure her Mother would be really really mad about losing the shoe. I got her pulled over to a safer spot and someone found the shoe floating and got it over to us. She kind of got sucked into an eddy somewhere in there which was scary for about 5 seconds until I hauled her out. We finally got her out and since she was the youngest I figured I would follow her close from here on out. I got her back in the current, when I realized Sonora was sitting on a rock in the middle of the river quite upset. She had really scraped up her leg and feet and was out of her tube. I helped her get back in her tube, but she was ready to be done right there. About this time Levi comes along and I see him standing up in the knee deep water with very wide eyes and a pained look on his face. He said "I hit my head". Levi couldn't get back situated in his tube either, I drug him over to an area where the water wasn't moving too fast, but it was about waist deep and it just took a long time to get him in his tube. All along I'm thinking, Levi could have a concussion, but probably not and Aubrey, Christopher and Katie are who knows where. I got Levi going and then headed down stream head first in my tube as fast as I could to catch up with the younger ones. As I leaped on my tube, my loosely tied swimming suit - loosed a little too much - and though the sun was out, whoever was behind me for those next few seconds got to see a rather full moon too.
Paul got back in the picture then, good thing. Everyone was OK but a little worse for wear. The rest of the trip wasn't too bad, I think I got knocked off the tube a few times. I eventually paddled down far enough to catch up with Christopher and Katie. Katie said the trip was fun and inspirational - we were at the real slow part of the river by then. Christopher wasn't happy at all. I asked him how he liked it and he said "not very much". Oh well. Sonora kept asking when we were going to be done because she wanted to go home NOW. That's when I finally gave up on the idea of going down a second time.
Well we pulled out of the river at the appointed spot and trudged up the hill. We gathered and assessed our injuries. Here's Levi's head and Christopher's leg. Katie managed to get through relatively unscathed - she called floating on the river "inspirational".
We grouped up, licked our wounds and ate lunch. Somewhere around then, Levi noted that he could see a bit too much of Christopher's "leg" from the back, Christopher's swimsuit had a tear that uh - well showed a little more of an area that he would have preferred not be seen.
We did get the benefit of seeing a really cool looking bug. I took a picture of it for posterity's sake. A few moment's later Christopher smashed it, which I didn't really think was called for - oh well.
Lunch was good - just what we brought. We saw several other victims go in and buy tubing tickets. Paul commented that it was a good thing they weren't handing out customer satisfaction surveys. One of the groups was a bunch of girls in bikinis. Oh my, wonder how they fared?
We left - without using our unlimited passes anymore and went to the local dollar store - which was one of the only stores in town - and bought peroxide, bandaids, cotton balls etc.
On the way out of town I stopped for two minutes at a home made dulcimer shop. Would have loved to have stayed longer, I need to get a dulcimer some day, lovely instruments.
There was also a cool place that did wood sculpture - some quite large.
To sum it up, I asked Aubrey if she liked it:
She said "not very much"
I said "but at least you'll remember it"
She said "YES, I'll tell my grandchildren about it! and they'll tell their grandchildren!"
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