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I cannot believe it’s taken me an entire week to talk about our whitewater rafting trip last weekend! But it has been a crazy week of recovering… You’ll understand in a minute.
When we arrived at the campground for River Expeditions we found out that we and 700 of our closest friends were camping that same weekend. That’s right. Seven.hundred.people. We found what appeared to be a quiet camping area. After all, it was 10PM, I’d been up since 5AM, we had just driven for 5 hours and we had a 9AM rafting time the next morning.
We set up camp, walked to the only wash house {700 people, half of which I’m assuming were female, and about 8 bathroom stalls and ten showers? Gross.}, and decided to get some sleep to prepare for a physically tough next day.
Sleep never happened. The whole campground was loud, but we had a group of hillbillies next to us who were screaming all night. Screaming instead of talking. When they were only feet from each other. Screaming about Natty Light.
Not even our Tylenol PM we had taken could keep us asleep. And I’m pretty sure in a drugged-up haze, I told BF I wanted to throw a brick at the hillbillies heads. He asked me where I’d get the brick. I ignored him.
At around 2AM we made an executive decision to sleep in our car. Our itty-bitty, two-door, Honda Civic. So we did.
The next morning we checked in for rafting and went directly to the 20-minute breakfast line. Surely they must have something delicious if all of those people were waiting for a continental breakfast, right?
Wrong. Oh so wrong. But I’m not even going to complain about the food. I had fruit that we brought instead. What I’m going to complain about is mine, and quite a few others, request for water.
There were two options: from-concentrate OJ or coffee. Here’s the deal. Recent stomach issues and coffee or juice before going out on a 6 or 7 hour long trip in the great outdoors? Not gonna happen. So hence my question about why the water from the soda machine wasn’t working. Her response: We are putting more water in the juice. Um, ok, but what about just water? Didn’t happen.
The rafting trip itself was incredible. We were in a boat with a great group of people. There’s something about being put in a situation where you really have to rely on people around you to instantly make a group of strangers close. I loved it.
Post-rafting we ran into one of my favorite bloggers, Analiese from Tulips and Tea, and her husband Jason! This was by far, my favorite part of the trip. We hung out, fireside, for a few hours and had a lot of laughs! I hope to meet up with her again and hope our paths cross in the future!
So all-in-all, the trip was a success. But we are now recovering. BF has bronchitis and I am just trying to stay healthy.
However, we will never, ever go back to River Expeditions. The outfitter we used last year, ACE Resort, was awesome and the only place I would truly recommend to anyone. You can see my old post here to see the differences in trips.
Amanda
What an awful camping experience….I was happy when we went this summer (my first time) that it was a quiet place. But I've heard stories similar to yours and it always makes me nervous about camping!
Analiese
We loved hanging out with you guys! I'm so sorry the rest of your experience sucked. 🙁
Simply Valorie
Oh no, I'm sorry it wasn't everything you hoped for! But at least you had some fun and it wasn't a total flop, right? 🙂
Carolyn
I went white water rafting ONCE when I was in 7th grade… to be perfectly honest, I don't remember much about it. Hope your next trip rocks!
Jenny @ Practically Perfect...
I'm a bit behind in my blogging! That camping sounds HORRID. I think that I would have sent Chris over there to make them shut up, except I might have been afraid that the hillbillies would kill him. There's nothing that makes me madder than people who are loud when everyone else is trying to sleep!
I'm glad that the rafting part was fun, though! I've never been so I'll have to live vicariously through your posts about it 🙂