Fun-filled, action-packed weeekend!

(thanks to Lisa, Steph & Cherokee Rafting for the photos)

Do you like our ghetto headlamps? :)
It's the new, hottest thing...trust me.

Friday night I met up with 23 other people to head down to the Ocoee river for some camping and whitewater rafting! Two of my favorite things! Since we left after work hours and lost an hour due to time-zone change, we made a late arrival at the campgrounds, but thankfully some peeps had headed up earlier that day and set up all of our tents! I felt SO bad when I remembered that the last time I camped, 3 weeks ago, it rained pretty hard and I had packed up the tent when it was still wet - intending to air it out when I got home. Ooooops. I completely forgot, and I can't imagine how rank it smelled when they pulled it out of the case. Sorry guys! We spent a late, late night just hanging out around the campfire, trying out the 9 varieties of s'mores I brought along (I'd been wanting to do a test run of all the combinations and get some feedback), sharing stories, getting to know each other, laughing and then slowly fading to our tents somewhere around 3am. It was a short night as we were up by 6:30 in order to eat a quick breakfast, tear down the camp and head to the outfitters.

We rafted the full Ocoee, which is about 10 miles with rapids up to class V. Shane was our guide from Cherokee Rafting, and he was sooo much fun! The guy has rafted every river imaginable (in the U.S. at least), and I was so excited when he said the Gauley was his favorite...only because I was able to raft that last fall and thought it was incredibly intense and a ton of fun too. I could have listened to his rafting stories for hours...they were so crazy!! Anyhow, we made it through the entire river without capsizing...although we did lose a few people along the way (not permanently, of course) and one of my friends twisted her knee pretty bad. My favorite part of the whole day was when we stopped for lunch after going through the Olympic course. We sat on the rocks and watched as raft after raft, flipped, people were roped in...it was SO much better than any other form of entertainment because you never knew what was going to happen next and the crowd of people watching were yelling and cheering...totally into it.

After we finished rafting, we headed back to the outfitters for quick showers and changing before piling back into our cars for the roadtrip home. We stopped at a great Mexican restaurant for a bite to eat and a bit more fellowship and we were off! I had so much fun with this crew and can't wait for the next adventure with them. I'm hoping it's somewhere mountainous and snowy :).

Sunday afternoon we had another sand volleyball game. It was fun even amidst the heat. Normally I'm not all that competitive as far as being frustrated whether we win or lose, but our final game we were up 9-2 and ended up losing...now THAT was a bit frustrating...but I think it was to the team as a whole. Regardless, we had a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to playing again next Sunday. After I said goodbye to the team, I headed to the pool with my roommate for a quick swim. It felt amazing in the heat and was a great way to rinse off all that sand :).

Next weekend I'm off to my east TN to see Bryce's new house and to visit my parents. First roadtrip with Gidget...should be interesting considering she gets really mad when I put her in the car carrier. She's so cute, but sometimes she sure is crabby :).