Adventuring in North Carolina

Tyler, Jasmine and I left for Bryson City on Tuesday. Adam and Tara too. We all got here in the evening. I was worried about my car, but it made it. I was worried because the forecast for this area showed 90% chance of storms everyday. The weather has been beautiful.

Wednesday morning we went whitewater rafting. It was not nearly as fun or challenging as last year. Partly because last year we had Felicia from "Stare if You Must" blog's kids with us. Her adult kids were guides. We had two rafts and a lot of competition and rescuing of each other. The water is much higher this year, so not as many obstacles. And her adult kids weren't here to guide, so we did a guided trip. It seems like we floated more than rafted at times. But we had fun being together. Just wish the trip had been more thrilling.

Since then we have done a lot of tubing, and now the Stare If You Must crew is here too,and Rick and the twins will be here soon, so there will be a lot more photos to come. But I only have internet using Adam's hotspot so I'm not sure how often I'll be online.

Vacation

If you thought Felicia from Stare if You Must or I fell off the face of the earth, we didn't. We are in the Smokey Mountains with a load of our kids! We should do a quiz: Can you identify these kids from a gazillion previous blog posts, but I'll spare you. I'm sure some of you could though. (And by the way, if you remember, Felicia and I met in blog land years ago and then our paths finally crossed in person twice because we were both headed to the same place, once on her sanity road trip and then this trip was planned).

Lest you think I posted all the photos and didn't leave any for her. These are just a few of the ones from her water camera. There are also two disks of pictures that rafting place took of us.

Anthony (hers)

Kaleb (mine)

Larissa (hers)

This is not even all of our kids. I am missing five and she's missing a couple.

Ty and me. Don't we look like we know what we're doing? Love the gear. I took my jacket off half way and didn't look nearly as "cool" without it.

Jason (her son who was our boat guide)

Jasmine, me and Ty

These things are heavy, but they have to be very durable to withstand the rocks. And we managed to lodge it onto a few rocks.

Kaleb and Jason

Me. We were loving it--most of the time. We we weren't thinking we were going to die.

Jason looks a lot more relaxed than Kaleb.

Our other team. Felicia's son in law, Ethan, was the guide for this boat. Tyler and Jasmine were with this group. There may have been a bit of rivalry between the teams :)

We were near two boats with official guides. They stopped half way and turned the boats upside down for a diving platform. To say it was cold doesn't begin to describe the water temperature. I think this is Ty. Update: Felicia is right. This is Anthony.

Anthony This is Kaleb, not Anthony

The girls did these little ballet leaps down the boats and into the water while the guys cannon balled, spun etc.

This is Jason like, "Fine. No one listens to me anyway. Just go ahead and we'll all just die."

More to come. I also never finished posting about Jasmine's choir tour.