Ocoee River Whitewater Rafting Trip

 This past weekend I was able to check another item off my 30 before 30 list!
Whitewater rafting!!

I had been wanting to go whitewater rafting for a long time, but when my boss went and told these amazing stories about her trip I knew it was time to go.  So M and I took off on our little whitewater rafting adventure. 

I had heard a lot of good things about the Ocoee river and it was decently close to home.  And I must say the drive there was beautiful!  We went with the Ocoee Adventure Center and our Guides name was Gator Man.  He told that he had been rafting for 25+ years and was known for rafting the Ocoee on an inflatable Gator raft from walmart.

They haul the rafts on top of school buses like so.  It's really neat to watch them unload and load these rafts.

 This is where they let your practice before you actually get on the rapids.  They show you basic moves like "forward two" this means paddle forward two times and "Hot Tub" which means get down in the middle of the boat.

This is where we put in at.  In front of a 45 foot waterfall.  I took these pictures after our trip. When it was our time for our trip,  too much water had been let out of the channel and this place was wild!  You can tell how high the water was where the concrete is wet.  At the bottom, where the rafters are standing was covered in about a foot of raging water! It was all we could do to walk our raft out to get into it.

This is where we started, you can see all the rafters at the top waiting their turns to go.

Im in the middle there, and you can tell my by face, I was having a blast.

and then.....

we flip the raft....

 We was rushed downstream in class four rapids hitting rocks and waves over and over.  According to our guide we was out of the raft for about a quarter of a mile.  It was one heck of a ride.  No one was injuried, other than several bruises and a few scrapes!

Thankfully, we was pulled back into another raft, our raft was retrieved along with our paddles and we was able to continue our trip.

Despite our little accident right out of the gate, we had a blast and would go again in a heartbeat.