Yesterday was the day. @flowerbaby and I finally went whitewater rafting together for the first time. This was my 3rd rafting trip and her first. Despite being very nervous at first, I'm happy to confirm that Hannah loved doing this so much. Of course, so did I, but I already knew how incredible a whitewater rush could be.
We left around 9 am after we ate some breakfast from Tudor's Biscuit World. The drive to Fayetteville was just over an hour away from us. It rained the entire drive up there, sometimes extremely hard too. In fact, the entire day's forecast called for rain. We thought this may hinder our experience, but luckily that was not the case. More on that later.
Upon our arrival, we along with several other groups and guides gathered in this beautiful semi-outdoor lodge with a bar and all sorts of games. The facilities with https://adventuresonthegorge.com/ are the best in Fayetteville. I feel the same about their employees too. All of them seem to really be happy to get to do what they do for a living.
After a period of waiting around, everyone was brought down to another area to get our gear. We each got a helmet, a life jacket, and a paddle. Then it was time to load everyone up on the school bus and meet the other trucks down by one of the many put-ins on the New River where they had prepared our rafts.
There was a safety talk during the bus ride and a brief explanation of how to use the equipment once we were off the bus. None of it was complex and most things we needed to know were stuff we couldn't really be taught until we were out on the water. I was so excited to get out there and on the water.
There was a total of 4 groups (maybe there were 5, I can't remember). Each one had 6-8 guests and one rafting guide to keep them safe. Out of all of the rafts, we got in the smallest group. All the rafts were the same size, but we had fewer people in total. Our group of 5 plus our guide. This meant our raft would be lighter and easier to maneuver, but that also meant we would be easier to flip over since we had less weight. Luckily, none of our people were thrown out of the raft. I can't say the same for the other groups. It was pretty comical to watch people soar from their raft, mostly because none of them actually got injured from it.
We went through at least a dozen rapids ranging from Classes 1-5. Class 6 is the most dangerous level of rapid, but we didn't have to deal with any that bad. That doesn't mean these rapids were not powerful, not at all. We were in danger through each of them, but our guide was competent and gave our group the confidence to stay safe together.
Speaking of our group, the three additional people all knew each other. They were each from Bangladesh but now live in the USA in Maryland and Texas. The two guys were new to whitewater rafting but quickly fell in love much like @flowerbaby. The girl that was with them had been twice before (once in Nepal) but was still terrified since she doesn't know how to swim. Lucky for her, the flotation device she was wearing would keep her form from having to swim much at all. One more thing about that girl, she was totally hilarious and kept the bought giggling from her weird sounds and reactions to each part of the trip down the river. These awesome people paired with our guide Matt gave us what I believe to be the best group out of the bunch.
It seemed as though our guide knew how to have the most fun. We were the ones that got to do all of the most dangerous things, such as this thing he called surfing. We were put nose-first into the rapids and were basically waterboarded, it was fucking awesome! He also let us jump out and swim (or should I say float hopelessly) through some of the rapids. I didn't say no to any of my chances to jump out of the raft and enjoy the warm water. I loved it so much, doesn't get much better than swimming in one of the oldest rivers in the world.
Towards the end of the adventure, we got some epic photographs of the famous New River Gorge Bridge. Even though it was raining hard, the photos still turned out great. The rain added a different ambiance that wasn't present during my previous two rafting trips with clear skies.
After we finished rafting, it was time to load up the big fire truck with all of the rafts. It was a team effort and only took 10-15 minutes. Then we all loaded up on the bus and the guides started handing out alcohol to everyone. Yes, there was a bunch of us on a school bus drinking beer. I couldn't say no to the free beer and we each got a couple. That was a wild bus drive back to the lodge. Our guide kept shaking everyone's beers up before he gave them out, this meant most people were forced to chug their beer.
When we got back, we got to make use of their nice facilities. I took a nice warm shower and changed into my Celtics jersey. We meandered back up to the bar area where food had been prepared for us. It wasn't an extravagant meal by any means, but the food was very tasty, especially since we had all worked up quite the appetite from paddling for 4+ hours.
By the end of it all, I decided to purchase the photo package for $60 and the video package for $50. It was a bit more than I had hoped to spend, but I just couldn't leave without having all of the footage. It was worth it in my opinion.
Speaking of the video, be sure to check my blog around this time tomorrow, as I will be posting a new one with all of our rafting footage. There is a ton of exciting moments and I have even more details to talk about. For those of you that prefer written content with photography, this blog will probably be the one you'll prefer. However, if you enjoy watching my videos, the one tomorrow is going to be one of my best in quite some time.
Thanks for reading today and be sure to leave any comments or questions down in the comments. I'm always down to have a conversation.