09.02.08
Another good day on the river, and driving with wasps! (h2 part 3)
So the morning shed light on just how wonderful the cabin was (despite that evil driveway). The sun shone in on us and we were able to fully appreciate the lovely waterfall in the front yard and front porch overlooking it and the valley (pics in the previous post). We weren’t able to stick around to enjoy it for long as we had to get on the river!
Our river for the day was the French Broad. Many of us hadn’t paddled it before so it was going to be a fun day, especially with the much warmer water and the toasty day. The river is located about an hour and half north and east of Sylva but still in and around the Smoky Mountains. Every area we go to is more of the same, wonderfully green mountains (really very large hills) with very fun windy roads where i try to make folks sick with my driving haha. The putin is located in the small town of Hot Springs which also happens to be right by the AT (the nanty is also right off the AT) so we’ve been seeing a lot of through hikers which is kind of cool thinking about what they are attempting (and reminding me of Weeks).
(pat and his PB & DB which i was converted to after trying although i even added honey- PBHDP- mmm pickles!)
Our paddle was full of playspots for surfing and the usual stern squirts and bow stall fun. We ended up with a bit of a quandry as we got to what we thought was the half way point at 4pm. We’d been on the water for a few hours and we started to wonder just how much further we had to go. We asked a raft guide bus driver and he said we had 4-5 miles yet, which was suprising to us and made a few folks nervous. We decided to keep paddling and just push hard to make sure we were defintely off the river before sunset. We did hit a bit of a flat patch but since we were paddling so fast it went fairly quickly. All the rapids seemed fairly straight forward alhtough we did sneak the last one (a class IV). We made it to the takeout at about 6:00 so we really had nothing to worry about it!
Larry B had to take off for home to get back to his family, and we all were getting hungry so we decided to head to a cute restaurant we’d seen on the way to the river. I was driving up the windy mountain roads when all of a sudden i felt a strong stinging pain in my back, and i assumed i was stung by something. After making sure i didn’t drive us off the road, i had Diana and Steve check my back and put on Benadryl to the sting point as i tried not to kill us – as i was still driving during this whole process. After 10 minutes (of some more stinging) we arrive at GRITS (Girls Raised In The South) where we’d planned on having dinner. As I got out of my car i found the culprit to my pain – a wasp was crawling around my seat (still alive). I let him go – i didn’t hold it against him seeing as i how i probably sat back on him in the first place. The restaurant was supposed to close at 8 and we were lucky enough that they stayed open to serve us, so we got to enjoy some good southern cooking including yummy sweet tea, okra and friend green tomatoes! After a food coma induced drive back to Sylva, we put in our nightly hike up the driveway. Due to the late hour, most of us passed out within minutes for another good nights rest.