Today is Nathaniel & my anniversary.
What did we do this past weekend to celebrate?
Well nothing for our anniversary, but as we are youth sponsors for the high school youth group at church we did go white water rafting on the Youghiogheny River in Western, PA! We drove the late crew who had sports Friday night and arrived at our camp sight around 3:00am Saturday Morning. We were up at 8ish had breakfast (thanks to camp hebron who supplied the tents, food, and had 5 persons who joined) and went to the river to wetsuits & prep.
That day we were out on the river having a grand ol' time. We had 3 rafts & a ducky (looks like a kayack, but inflatable like a raft). We had the youth pastor who was the guide on the duck and 2 experieced captins, so the captin of our raft had been rafting once or twice but never been a guide. We did not have any youth in our raft (3 sponsors & 2 persons from Camp Hebron). For the least experienced raft we did great! Making it through all rapids & challenges but one with laughter, conversation, and enjoyment.
Unfortunately our raft did "kiss" dimple rock, the hardest & most dangerous rapid on our stretch. We hit a hard knocking 4 of the 5 of us out of the raft and tumbling through the rest of the rapid.
Here is a video on youtube I found of a guy sucessfully going through (a different raft type, but you get the idea). It is longer rapid, and imagine being IN the white waters without a raft in the current and capping water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czMc3e6W2UE
3 of the 4 of us manged to hold onto the raft when we dumped (the 1st big rock is dimple rock). Nathaniel stayed on, we got held up on a rock and the other 2 could not hold on at this point as while the raft was stopped we swimmers were in the middle of a strong current (the other 2 swimmers eyes were HUGE at this point). As they floated on Nathaniel was able to maneuver the raft around the rock it was stuck on to a better point and get me in. We then did our best to follow the other 2 and get them in, it took a bit as we could not get the raft still enough to grab the swimmer or swimmers close enough for them to grab on to a paddle. The 4th who dumped was not able to hold on at all & after falling & splashing through much of the rapid (& passing other rafts who offered her no help) was picked up by a raft with a family from Baltimore.
Quite the experience, while the fall was dangerous & NOT a great time it made a good story for us all to talk about around the fire that night. We all said we would go rafting again which says a lot about the experience of white water rafting as a whole.
A good adventure & a line to cross out on my bucket list (looking forward to next years trip & a successful run through dimple rapid)
What else for our anniversary? Well, meet Moses our new puppy our gift
to one another. He was 2.5 months old when we got him from a rescue. He
is a basset hound/beagle mix (although we think he may have more in him
then that). Right now he is 10 pounds, quiet, and loves to cuddle.
Moses
We are quite happy to have him as we've both wanted to have a dog before we were married and were plesently surprised to get our landlords permission to do so a several weeks ago. Keeping a clean house gets the credit as they said they knew we would not let it ruin the apartment. We are thankful for their trust.
