July 18, 2015–Day 13 Cherokee National Forest, TN–Hiwassee River

  • Jul 27, 2015
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ADRENALINE OVERLOAD!

We woke to the soothing sound of an acoustic guitar from our neighbor.  After a breakfast of porridge with a twist we headed to canoe the Hiawassee River.

We left our campsite at 11:10 and arrived back on a paved road twenty-five minutes later. Scott dropped us off at the put-in at 12:25. On the way to the put-in Scott pulled over and told Brooke to move over so we could let a hitch-hiker come in. Brooke looked at us, looked at the hitch-hiker and raised her eyebrows above her sun glasses.  For a moment I didn’t think she was going to scoot over. It turns out our hitch-hiker had been a guide on the Ocoee for eight years.

Scott dropped the car off at the take-out at Hiwassee Outfitters and then walked a bit and finally caught a ride hitchhiking back to us.  While Scott was gone the river was taunting the kids. Scott arrived to us by 1:10.

We got out on the river at 1:23.

We pulled out behind a rock to rest and snack after a rapid. My adrenaline-loving Miss was eager for more rapids.

So here’s the lowdown.  The section of The Hiwassee we canoed had some class 2 rapids.  We have never attempted anything above a 1 with the canoe and the kids. And…Cody is still not a confident swimmer. We saw some people lose their boats.  To be fair though, there were some people wild enough to go down the river in a tube. It was possible to avoid some of the bigger rapids, and yet somehow we managed to find most of them. Although I soon learned that it is not terribly easy to steer the boat when you can’t always predict the movements of your crew.

There was a eerie fog that settled on the river that made it difficult to read some of the rapids until we were right on top of them.  We could hear them though and just barely make out the silhouettes of paddlers in front of us before they disappeared into the fog.

We hit some large holes that looked as if they wanted to swallow us up and some rapids were continuous.  We all have bruises on multiple limbs. Not necessarily from the rocks, but from when we fell onto the sides and bottom of the boat when the boat hit rocks. We took on quite a bit of water at some rapids.  So much so that at one point the boat was more than 5/6 water.  Scott and I were both bailing out the water.  We had to bail quickly in order to be ready for the next rapids.  The boat is a lot more tipsy with so much water in it.  However, we never flipped the boat or had to swim. Not once. Whew!

We arrived back at the take-out at 3:30.

Excited that we made it back safe from our first class 2 canoeing adventure the kids played for a while at the take-out and watched wild people jumping off the bridge.

Brooke was determined to jump off the train bridge.  I told her she needed to swim to the middle of the river and back and she did.  I told her she needed to convince Scott to take her, and she did. She found a little girl named Caitlyn who was nine who had already jumped off the bridge.  Caitlyn and her dad helped Brooke find the courage to go flying. I earned a few more grey hairs from the rapids today, but it turns out I needed a few more from watching Brooke first walk across the train bridge and then jump off it. Scott was glad he did it. He said it was a lot of fun.  He was thankful for the little girl who inspired Brooke to actually jump.  There was another little girl who clamored up the bridge a while before Brooke and stood there overthinking the whole thing until a train came.  The whole crowd down below was yelling for her to jump and she finally did.  Thankfully the train approaches slowly expecting wild ones to be up on the bridge.

Cody realized he had a wiggly tooth.  This one is on the bottom. This makes loose tooth number two.  Scott attempted to help Brooke get up the train bridge by climbing up closer to the river, but it was not a successful attempt.  They had to walk all the way down to the where the land met the bridge and back instead.

We arrived back to our campground a little before 6.

The kids and I went hunting for sticks for the fire.  In the process Cody found Snaily.  While the fire was warming up Scott took us all down to the creek.

Scott taught the kids how to skip stones.  We cleaned and prepared the corn Scott had picked up from the Farmer’s Market. The corn had to be turned into light sabers of course.

Brooke wanted to turn some of the corn husks into dolls like we had done at The Trail of History. (We are still sad there will be no more Trail of History.) We made a whole family of corn husk dolls. Lurking under this concrete picnic table was an army of Daddy Long Legs.  They liked burgers and even tried to attack Snaily at one point. I had no idea Daddy Long Legs could be carnivorous.

Scott’s big eyebrows in this picture are because I was trying to get the corncob holders out and Scott was just a little afraid that I was going to launch the cob at him. He suffered no injuries…this time!  The kids and I took laps around the small campground with the soccer ball while Scott cleaned up dinner. We attempted to dry all our river gear before our next river trip the next day.  Southeast = hot and sticky –> no drying.

Cody was using the last bits of energy he had dancing around the fire and lighting his stick on fire.  Then he and Scott said they were done.  They both looked like limp rag dolls in their chairs.

Right before we headed into the tent I discovered Snaily had moved.  Apparently he likes cornhusks.  Brooke was distraught to learn Snaily was eating her family of cornhusk dolls.  So…I moved Snaily to a leftover cornhusk that wasn’t part of Brooke’s family.  Cody was excited that I made a cornhusk guy for him. Cody would have been more than happy to have Snaily eat his cornhusk guy.

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