h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi everybody! I just went on a canoe trip with some members of my church, and it was lots of fun. I was really anxious about going because I normally sleep during the day and stay awake at night - but amazingly I was able to stay awake when I should, and not doze off in the canoe!

My friend K was nice enough to drive us, it was about a three hour drive to the middle of Tennessee to the Buffalo River. We met up with many people from our church at the campgrounds there. I borrowed my brother's little two man tent. We arrived at sunset and pitched our tents, and I got drenched with sweat from just that. We visited with the folks there, then tried to go to bed about midnight. My friend S tried to sleep in the tent with me, but it was very claustraphobic, and she finally slept on a blanket outside. K was smart, she brought a big tent with a huge air mattress! I had a hard time getting to sleep because someone was playing music. About 2 am I got sick, from the combination of the sweating and my medicines I think, and threw up! Bleh, low point of the trip. Luckily, soon after that the music stopped, and I stopped feeling sick, and was able to sleep.

Saturday morning we got up about 7:30 am and had tortillas with scrambled eggs and sausage. Very tasty. At 11 we piled onto a bus and headed upriver. We had a lot of people - 19 canoes in all. There were three of us, me and K and S, in a canoe. It was very wobbly, much harder to keep our balance than I expected. I let K and S do all the paddling, partly because I was afraid I was too out of shape to paddle, and partly because I was so inexperienced and might steer us into a tree. The river itself was just beautiful, very clear water, lush vegetation, and sections with striated rock along the banks. In many places trees grew out nearly parallel with the water.

The water was very shallow, and several times we were grounded. Then one or more of us had to jump out of the canoe and pull it over the rocks. It was adventurous, more than I had counted on! My supposedly waterproof sunscreen washed off pretty fast, and I got a little toasted. We stopped for lunch on a rock beach, and a lot of people swam, but I didn't want to be submerged more than I already had been! At one point we wound up floating backwards in our canoe, LOL. Everything was incredibly green and beautiful, and much of the time we were out of vision range of the other canoes, so I felt like Lewis and Clark exploring. We passed a cow at one point that had come down into the river to cool off. A light rain forced us to pull over and stop at one point, but it was not a long delay.

Our journey downriver was about four hours long. When we arrived back at camp we decided we wouldn't stay the night again, because of our claustraphobic tent and the threat of music. So we packed up before dinner. K and I were on the dinner cooking crew, we helped cook meat and cheese raviolis and sauces. Just as dinner was ready, a huge storm hit! Big gusts of wind hit us and sent several tents rolling down the hill! Everyone grabbed onto the poles of the pavillion we were under to keep it from blowing away. It poured buckets, and my last pair of dry shoes got soaked. We all huddled shoulder to shoulder and ate ravioli, LOL. K and S and I were SO GLAD that we were already packed! In the car I put on some dry socks, and K was such a good sport to drive us back at night.

So I had a wonderful time, despite a bit of sickness and some sunburn. It was a rip roaring time. I took a bunch of pictures with a disposable camera, but that got dunked in the river several times, so who knows if the pictures will come out. K asked me if I wanted to go next year, but I don't know if I am brave enough to go again! But I did so enjoy having a vacation - it such a nice change of pace to get to go somewhere far away and do something neat.

JEllen "Row, row, row your boat..."

Glad you had a good time.
You are a good sport to cheerfully hang in there

Sounds like it took bravery and determination on your part.
Congrats to Ellen for trying something new!

*waves to Abbi, hi*

you are more adventerious, than I am!



go next year you will be more expierenced

Hi JEllen

Glad you enjoyed yourself,you have more guts than i have,dont think i would have atempted it even if i was younger...well done
nice to have you back

xxxSan

Great journal entry JEllen, thanks for sharing your cool trip!

That sounds like a lot of fun.
Ah, it reminds me of the very short canoe trips I used to take a few years ago, down a river in Essex in the UK. I haven't done anything even remotely similar since, partly because of a lack of opporunity and partly because the nearest river that can be paddled about on is probably The Colorado.

I don't think I'm ready for that just yet...

yay and go you!
sounds like it was a great trip - character building at the end there!

Thanks Vixen, glad you liked reading about it.

Ellen, sounds like you had a great, although not totally uneventful time! But, isn't that what life's all about...sharing adventures with friends every now'n'then? Glad you enjoyed it!

Hi Jazz! I really hoping the pictures turn out.

Well, if they don't you painted a pretty good mental picture!

Hi JEllen!

Wow, it sounds like you had a really good time. Despite that first bad evening, you seem to really have enjoyed the trip! There is just something about being in nature ... away from what we think of as real life! And even that first night was sort of a good thing because it got you all packed up before the storm! I would love to take a trip like yours some time!!!!! (maybe without the music part!)

it does sound like you had fun. Sounds like you had some storm. Good thing you'd already packed and decided not to stay the night. That probably would have been miserable. I haven't been very far intto Tennessee. I think i've only been to Membhis. But on the way there I drove through Arkansas which was spectatucar in the early spring. The really weird thing was that I had had a dream about a landscape just like it in the years before. I'm convinced I dreamed about Arkansas having never been there.

Hiya JEllen!

I finally got to read about your canoe trip, and it sounds like it was a lot of fun! Except the throwing up part.

I hope your photos do turn out, because I'd love to see them!

I kinda wish I had been brave enough to paddle some, but who knows, we might have capsized if I had!

"we might have capsized if I had!"

Well that seems highly unlikely, JEllen.
Maybe next time you go you could try it. Doesn't mean you have to do it the whole way. If you don't feel comfortable paddling hand the paddling back to someone who is. Or maybe you just need to get used to the feeling of being in a canoe before you feel comfortable trying to paddle. I'm sure that's fine too. I hope you have more chances to try it.

I imagine paddling would be a lot like how I feel about driving... for some people, it would feel better to be "in control" of the situation, whereas I would be more apprehensive. And it sounds like it would be pretty strenuous. But I bet you would like to be doing the paddling, JEllen. I hope you'll get a chance sometime, too.

I just know how out of shape I am. I got winded just pulling the canoe over the rocks. And when the canoe would hit ground it would tilt wildly, and had I been up on a seat, I know I would have gone in the drink!

I have started walking after dinner, trying to get a little more fit.

Good for you for walking, JEllen! Walking is really good exercise and you don't need any special equipment for it! Is it hot a humid there during the day? I'm visiting my folks in Ohio right now and it's so much more humid here than in Denver!! It doesn't help that we've been getting thunderstorms every day. I'm pretty impressed you didn't fall in the river at all! I know I'm a little overly clumbsy, but I always fall down or fall in something.