Camping, Float Trip - Part 2

I don't know where on this trip these pictures are...but I'll start at not long after the seven mile mark. After that, there were fewer and fewer places with moving water. Roby ended up rowing a lot of the way. Also around this time, Sean's raft got a hole in it that we tried, and failed to repair. At that point, we put our coolers and other things in his raft, the kids came in our raft, and Sean and his wife use our kids' raft. Roby was then rowing our raft, the kids' raft with our friends in it, and the half deflated raft behind it.

Look at those muscles! ;-)

Every now and then we would bump into other rafters.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this pic of her!

A lot of the way, the kids would get out and swim or walk by the rafts.

Having fun!

Roby and Ethan hanging out.

Natalie got into a canoe of one of Roby's friends and helped row.

Roby and Sean shared a raft for a while...it was interesting to say the least! :-)

The kids love the water guns!

Amazingly, there was an ice cream man on the way. Seriously! It was hot, so we stopped for some ice cream!

See, ice cream van.

Roby was working hard the whole way, not only did he row the last four miles straight, but the whole day he was helping us get unstuck on rocks, boulders, logs, whatever.

Taking a break. :-)

HI MOM!

At one point Natalie was floating along the raft with Roby. A canoe came up behind the...and hit Natalie in the side of the head. She started bawling, Roby grabbed her out of the water, and a large knot formed instantly. The people felt horrible, apologizing over and over. Nat ended up sitting with me for quite a while.

I finally got a little smile.

Yup, back in the water.

This is my favorite pic of Ethan. He has a dragonfly on his knee!

I love this pic too. By 6:45 pm, when we were finally done with the float, the kids' hands were a little wrinkled!

The place we camped had buses that would come to the seven or fourteen mile stop places and pick people up. (They had a pretty good system of checking how many people were on the water and how many they picked up so no one was left out there.) By the time we got there, we were all exhausted.

I don't know what this face was for, but it cracks me up!

There, that one is better!

Roby and me. We were tired. You can already see the burn on Roby.

Back at camp, we ate dinner, sat for a little while, then went to bed (close to 10:00 pm!).

This is how the kids woke up Sunday morning.

We didn't eat, but packed our stuff and left. We were that ready to get home so we could take showers and sleep in our bed!

Still smiling!

Happy Roby.

About half an hour on the road we stopped at a little dinner for breakfast. It reminded us a lot of Tommy's Dutch Lunch where Roby worked back in the day. It was delicious and hit the spot!

My car, nicknamed "Sunkist" on the trip, got a little dirty.

Because we were camping, I decided to not let the kids bring electronic toys. They could sleep, read, draw, look out the window, twiddle their thumbs, whatever! They did really well, only bickering a couple times!

Natalie took full advantage of sleepy time!

I'm not sure where on the river I took this video, but I thought I'd share 'cause I like Natalie's attitude. There were a lot of nice people, some talked to us, others just floated by. The kids were constantly using their water guns, these guys thought it was time for a water fight! Right after I stopped recording, Natalie started shooting water back at them and was giggling the whole time!

Overall, it was a great trip! Regardless of our massive sunscreen usage, Roby and I still got burnt. The kids were fine! Natalie said the only thing she didn't like was getting hit in the head by a canoe! I don't blame her! Ethan said he liked the whole trip! If we do something like this again, I would camp in the "family friendly" area instead of where we did, and only do seven miles of floating... :-)