Feel like your summer isn’t complete? Looking for one last fun activity to squeeze
in before the cool weather rolls around?
Well maybe it’s time to finally try white water rafting!
Six of us decided to go with River City Rafting on June 29th,
and it was such a fun experience!
Especially since six is the magic number and fills up an entire
raft. So we had an entire raft to
ourselves, it was the perfect weather, perfect water height/intensity, and our
guide…captain…whatever, the guy from the company in charge of us was awesome.
It’s only as scary as you want it to be. Seriously.
Let me explain: personally, I’m
an adrenaline junky and was always on-board to go bouncing through our city on
the James River, which is known for being the only urban setting with Class III
and Class IV rapids. But when it was
finally the day of our trip I realized that one of my knees was pretty swollen
and had obviously gotten a little sprained at either a gym class or volleyball
game; therefore, I was not as gung-ho about the idea of being thrown into water
and having to swim.
So I went in a little nervous. But the whole process prepares you way too
much for there to be too much to worry about (yes, there’s always the
possibility you might drown when you’re in a river, but there’s always the
possibility that you might get hit by a car or have a tree fall on you, so let’s
not get carried away). After transporting
us to the departure site, they sat everyone down before we even got near a raft
and gave us a rundown of how to sit in the raft, how to hook our feet in, how
to hold our paddles, how to handle every scenario that could happen if anyone
fell out, etc. They covered all the
bases and answered any questions until everyone felt comfortable.
Then we got into our rafts in a pretty calm point in the
river and went through a few practice rapids.
The guide yells out commands for the rafters to either paddle right,
left, ahead or back, so these practice rapids were good for seeing how our
group handled that and getting synchronized.
Then they give you a chance to get out and swim if you want. All but one of us did, and it was really fun
and relaxing. (It also gave me a chance
to see how my knee handled swimming…not well was the answer…my nervousness came
back a little bit).
Then when free swim was over, our guide took the opportunity
to show us how to execute the retrieval procedure that had been explained to us
at the beginning of the trip (i.e. he was gonna yank one of us back into the raft
and then we’d help yank everyone else in).
Guess who was chosen as the demonstrator… hooraaaaay. I don’t like being the first to do anything
out of fear of embarrassing myself. And
this one delivered! Lol Because as he pulled up on my life vest, I was supposed
to grab some ropes on the side of the raft and help hoist myself in. However, I didn’t realize it’d be so easy for
him to hoist me up, so I over compensated and went flying out of the water and
into the raft and made the most awesomely terrible sound of surprise. Our guide said he was worried birds might come
out of the woods at us because they thought an animal was dying J I’m awesome. ANYWAY
the point is, it’s a lot easier to pull someone back into a raft than you
think. No one in our raft fell out (in
fact, someone only fell into the raft…into my leg…kinda hurt), but another raft
lost someone in a pretty rough patch, and he was fine and his co-rafters had no
problem pulling him back in.
Going into the rapids, they looked scary. They were stronger than they could’ve been
because we’d had a lot of rain so the river water was a little high. But it was so FUN. You work together as a team, paddling through
the rapids the whole time, and as long as you anticipate the rapids and keep
your feet hooked, you’re fine. Like I said, during one rough patch the guy next
to me fell into the raft, but other than that no one had a problem (including
the girl in front of me who’s smaller and lighter than I am).
After the Hollywood Rapids (the roughest rapids we saw that
day), all the rafts pulled over onto the end of Belle Isle for a snack and some
water. They bring enough water for
everyone to have 2 or 3 cups, and enough trail mix (the good kind with raisins
and M&M’s) for everyone to have seconds.
Then it was back in the rafts to finish out the rest of the trip. It ended at the Pipeline Rapids (which is
where the only person fell out) and then at a calm spot, they let us out at
some steps, loaded us into the bus, and took us back to the River City Rafting
headquarters. The whole trip (with
commute to and from the site included) took about 3 hours.
It really was an awesome day and experience. I want to go back again. It feels so good to fight through the water
and bounce around. And getting to swim
around for a little bit at the beginning was really nice and refreshing. If you want to be dangerous and sit further
to the outside of the raft, you can. If
you want to be closest to danger, you can sit in the front. But if you want to be as safe as possible,
you can sit further into the raft and towards the back. It’s all up to you. But this company took really good care of us
and I would recommend them to anyone thinking of setting of a trip.
River City Rafting offers rafting trips, tubing
trips, and tube rentals. Cost for
rafting trips runs around $65 a person and typically lasts for 2-4 hours. Minimum size for certain trips is 4 while 6
for others. You can learn more by
calling 232-RAFT (7238), or via their website or Facebook page.
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