Whitewater Rafting: Our featured activity for the day was whitewater rafting, so it was back to River Expeditions, where we had been several days before playing paintball. We needed to sign in an hour before our scheduled 9:20 departure, so it was a much earlier wakeup time than most were used to. Of course, I had already been up a couple of hours and spent the morning once again walking the grounds of Glade Springs. Once signed in, we had time to eat an included continental breakfast at the restaurant located by the sign-in building.
Once they were ready for us, we selected our life vests, helmet and paddle before boarding the school bus that would take us to the launch ramp on the New River. With its child and granparent-friendly calss I-III rapids, we chose to do the Upper New River Canyon tour. Each raft had a capacity of eight, so three from our group split off to share with other adventurers taking the trip. Besides us rafters, a group of people choosing individual inflatable kayaks were also headed downriver.
We got off to a quick start with the first rapids just a short distance from our launch point. We were to experience many more rapids as the day went on, with long runs, or places of smooth water flow, in between. It was during within these runs that our guide allowed us to remove our helmets and, if desired, to jump overboard and spend some time swimming downriver. He made sure we had plenty of time to get back in the raft and ready for the next rapids. While swimming in the cool waters of the New River was relaxing, it did take some effort to climb back into the raft once the run was coming to an end.
After an hour and fifteen minutes on the river, we had reached our pull-out spot for lunch. We played in the river a short time while the guides set up our lunch buffet, carried in the coolers onboard each raft. Lunch consisted of cold-cut sandwiches, vegetables, potato salad, pasta salad, chips and pudding and watermelon for dessert. Once we had our fill, it was back in the rafts for the second half of our trip. We swapped some of our group between rafts, allowing us to enjoy other people's company for the afternoon.
It was more rapids and swimming as we continued our trip down the New River. A few of us made a dash for the riverbank where very cold water was shooting out a culvert, emptying into the river.We eventually came to the pull-out spot, where the school bus picked us up to transport us back to River Expeditions base camp. We turned in our gear and, after spending some time playing in their swimming pool, headed over to the showers to clean off and put on some fresh clothes. A short time later we found ourselves in the Red Dog River Saloon enjoying the drinks that were included with our tour, watching the video put together by the photographer and videogrpher for the trip.
Grandpa's Dinner: Now that all the other members of the family had taken their turn preparing dinner for everyone, grandpa's time had come. Rather than cooking for us at our rental lodge, he opted to take us all out to a local restaurant. In order to decide which restaurant to take us, he gave each of us secret ballot listing four options. We then chose the one we wanted to go to most: Bob Evans.