Stilly River

Last week, Ben and Kelsey and a few of their friends took my dad's giant raft and floated down the Stilly River. I picked them up at the bottom to take them to Ben's car and heard all about how fun floating the river was. They had a cooler, a radio, food and a lot of fun. I was determined to get out on the Stilly myself!

On Friday, I called Beth and asked her if she had any interest in getting on a small boat and floating down a river. "Um, yes." was her reply. We were set. All we needed was treats, drinks, and dad's raft. (all very easy to obtain).

SO... our nice relaxing float down the river did not turn out exactly like Ben's... I am sure of it.

We got to the park at the top, blew up the raft and headed to the entrance like everyone else. The hill to the water was quite steep and we almost lost a few of us before our toes even hit the water. After getting in, it was shallow water and we had to move the raft to a much deeper area before we could start our "float." This is where things took a turn for the worst!!

We started walking on the rocks, without river shoes. We soon realized this was going to take forever, so we put our flip flops on and hoped our toes were stronger than the river current. Not true. After about 3 steps we saw Beth's pink flip flop floating down the river without us. Floating toward a giant pile of trees and moving very quickly. Luckily there was a man hanging out on the side of the river at this point. He jumped in, got the flip flop and saved the day.

Unfortunately, this was not the only bump in our river fun. We got through the shallow water and came to a very quick moving current. Some people were going up and around by the rocks, but not us. We ventured right through the current. Greg had the raft, Steve had Beth and my hands and we ventured through it.

Here we are right before we entered the deep current. The water was up to my thighs. We started walking through it, without much trouble at first. Then... the current caught Beth's legs and swept her down the river. I was still holding her hand, but soon realized that I was going to pull her under if I didn't let her go. The problem was that if I let her go, she would too be headed in fast moving water, right toward the same pile of logs and trees that her flip flop had floated to. I had no choice, I couldn't hold her. We let her go and she gracefully floated down the river. She came to the logs, floated right by and started swimming in the water that immediately slowed down after the logs. I was laughing so hard I was crying because she looked so peaceful.

Greg, on the other hand, was not so peaceful. He saw Beth floating down the river and had a small heart attack. He somehow had the idea that Beth couldn't swim. He threw down the raft, and started running towards Beth and the rocks, and the logs. Running bay watch style! After hurting his feet on the rocks and running until he could see that Beth was ok he sat in the river and composed himself. His feet were cut up pretty badly and his heart beat was slowly returning to normal.

All this BEFORE the floating even began!

To make a long story short, the river was really fun after we were able to get in, paddle, swim, float, eat and drink. It took us four hours to get down, but it was a lot of fun! I would have more pictures from the trip, but in my laughing/nervousness to make sure Beth was ok, I dropped my camera in the bottom of the boat... which had filled up with water before we even started down the river.