A week of Adventure (the novel)!

Last week Chris and I got the chance to take a vacation together!  It was so much fun and Chris was really needing a break from work.

Friday
On Friday night, we drove down to Columbus to drop Maggie off at Chris' parents' house.  Beth and Rachelle were so nice and watched Maggie for us while we went away for a few days.

Chris' "it's a little too early to be taking pics" face :)

Saturday
On Saturday morning, we hit the road at 8:30am and headed towards West Virginia!  After a little mishap in Cincinnati and someone giving poor directions (you can probably guess who that is...me!) to the driver (Chris), we were in the state of many mountains, hills, trees, and windy roads! 

"AA" highway going through Kentucky = beautiful scenery!

We're in West Virginia!

The capitol building in Charleston, WV.  Chris said the building has goldleaf on it!

The nice building right next to the capitol that I got while trying to get another pic of the capitol :)

The toll road to get from Charleston down south

Oak Hill, WV was our destination

We arrived at Ace Adventure Resort (our rafting outfitters) by 3:30pm.  We got checked in and headed to the top of the mountain where our campsite was located!  After getting our tent setup, we decided that the lake area at the resort looked like a lot of fun and wanted to check it out.  So we got our wristbands and PFD's (personal flotation devices) and were headed up the stairs to the huge waterslide.  But we were stopped because people were coming down - I guess a storm was headed our way and they were making everyone get out of the water.  So we decided that we would hit some trails since we couldn't be in the lake.  The trails I had researched were located in Fayetteville, WV, which was about a 15 minute drive from Ace.  (Fayetteville is home to the famous New River Gorge Bridge - the longest arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere!)  So we hit the trail by the Canyon Rim Visitors Center and Diamond Point Trail.  The first trail was short and gave a spectacular view of the bridge!  Then we headed on the trail to Diamond Point (roundtrip of 2 miles) and were having a blast just being in the woods and doing something we love to do!  This trail had several lookouts and it was awesome to see Mr. I'm-Pretty-Scared-Of-Heights walking out near the edge of cliffs...I think I was more nervous than him at times!  We got some awesome pics of the gorge and the bridge as the sun was coming through the gorge (it was about 6:30 by this point).  We got a glimpse of a few rapids that we would encounter during our rafting trips.

Amazing views at Diamond Point!

Some of the rapids we'll be doing on the lower New River!

The New River Gorge Bridge in the distance

After hitting the trails, we decided it would be a good time to hit Fayette Station Road, which is the old road they used "back in the day" to get across the river.  (Actually they used it up until 1977 since the New River Gorge Bridge was not finished until then!)  We decided it didn't matter what time we ate dinner - we were more focused on what there was to see and do!  It took us about an hour to drive the windy, steep, and one-way road.  I'm so glad we did because we got to see so many sides of the bridge.  It was neat to see it at this time of day since the sun was bouncing every which way as it was lowering.  This road also goes across the old bridge.  After driving that road, it was crazy to think that the people in the area had to drive on that road everyday up until about 30 years ago!

No we did not wear matching shirts on purpose :)

They still use trains to haul coal through here.

Fayette Station bridge

So on our way back to Ace, we grabbed some Wendy's (oh, my favorite) for dinner.  We were satisfied that we had already seen so much in such little time and we were looking forward to our first day of whitewater rafting.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, we woke up with the anticipation of our first day!  (I was also pretty well rested since we brought along Chris' mom's cot that I slept on.  I was surprised to know that it was pretty comfortable!)  After having a good breakfast at the resort, we checked in at 8am.  We were soon on our way to the river on the Ace "school bus" with lots of others.  It was cool because we got to talk with some people from Charleston, WV.  Chris had noticed the dad's Annapolis hat and the boy's Navy shirt.  (Chris almost went to the Naval base in Colorado, but he failed his physical.)  So they got to talking a lot.  They were really nice. 

Anyway, we were in our duckies in the Upper New River before we knew it.  (Duckies are one or two-person inflatable rafts - a little smaller than the size of a canoe.)  Chris and I chose to have our own duckies for the day instead of sharing one.  Our first day on the upper New was pretty relaxing and easy-going.  We had mostly small rapids and a lot of stopping, getting out and swimming.  It reminded me a lot of going on a float trip in Missouri.  The day included Chris and I both jumping off of "Jump Rock" (a tall rock that you can jump off of) and Chris doing something called the "ducky run".  The "ducky run" is really meant to be something fun for the little kids to do (since this is one of the only trips that little kids can go on), but my hubby wanted to participate too!  So they lined up several duckies end to end and flipped them over.  Then you try to run as fast as you can on them and see how far you make it.  I have to say that Chris did a pretty good job since his center of gravity was much higher than the other "kids" that were trying this!

Before we knew it, we were at the biggest rapid of the day, Surprise!  It was definitely a surprise!  There's basically a 4-foot hole that you can't see until you're in it.  When I went through it, I flipped on one of the large rapids next to the big hole.  After getting the ducky off the top of my head in the water, I was good.  Chris did a little better - he was able to surf in the rapid, which one of the guides said he's never seen before!  (Surfing is basically just riding on top of the wave, without tipping over of course.)

Overall, it was a great day and a good chance to relax on the river and get our feet wet (literally and figuratively).  They also had a great grilled lunch for us on the river and cold drink (including some barley pop, as they called it) when we were done.  It was great too because there was a videographer along on our trip, so we got to watch the footage later that afternoon.  It was funny to watch ourselves on camera!

That night Chris went for a run from our resort back to the main road.  It was definitely a good workout for him since there was one hill that's almost a mile long!  He got to pass through the small old mining town of Minden that you have to pass through to get to Ace.  (Driving through there made us realize how blessed we are.)  After showering and watching the video, we had a good dinner at the resort.  Then we headed up to the mountain top to make our first campfire!  It was great to just be there in such a relaxing place.  We could've sat there and looked at the fire forever!

Our little campsite!

Chris making our fire

Fire with the shower house in the background :)

Yum, roasting marshmellows for smores

Monday
On Monday, we woke up in anticipation of going on the Lower New River!  We were excited!  After another good breakfast and our pre-trip meeting, we were on the bus and off to the river.  Our main guide for our trip was quite entertaining - his name was Cosmo (or Cramer) and liked to be sarcastic.  He was quite fun!

Then we were in the river in our 6-person raft with our tour guide and a family of 4 from Florida.  Our tour guide was great because he had over 20 years of experience and he's a flight medic.  So we felt really safe!  The first average-sized-rapid came and the older lady in our raft flipped out and into the water.  We were thinking that it was going to be a long day if that kept happening.

After doing just a few rapids, we were at the best surfing spot of the day (or at least the one with the strongest water).  When we got to it, there was already another outfitter with a few rafts there.  It was kind of bizarre because the raft essentially got stuck in the surf with only the rafting guide in it.  And he couldn't flip it or do anything!  (We were all wondering what the heck this guy was doing.  He wasn't in danger, he was just stuck!)  After watching him try to get it himself for what seemed like at least 5 minutes, one of the Ace rafts threw their rope to him to pull him out of it.  (We're not sure why one of the other rafts from his outfitter didn't come help him.)  After that drama, it was our turn to paddle into the rapid to try to surf.  We ended up getting into the surf a total of 3 times, which our guide said was a lot because you really have to paddle hard to get into it!  It was crazy because when we got into it you were just trying to go to the high side of the raft (to keep from getting dumped in the water)!  The first time we got in it, me and the two other girls got dumped out.  Then the older guy and the older lady fell out on the 2nd and 3rd times.

There were even some "swimmer rapids" that we swam through.  On one of them, Chris and I tried going down it together.  Chris was going to take a picture while going through it, but I pulled his arm making him spin around.  Needless to say we didn't go through it together - my butt hit a rock on my way through and I popped up quickly.  Chris finally surfaced 10 to 15 yards down the river.

There was another rock to jump from that day, so I decided to do it.  My only injury from the trip came from when I was trying to get to the rock!  There were some large rocks that we had to climb on to get to it.  I slipped once and hit my shin on a rock, but I was ok! 

We also didn't make it without Chris getting dumped into the water - yay!!  On one of the last rapids, our guide decided to take us through the biggest part of the rapid, which everyone else was avoiding!  But our guide knew we could handle it.  He yelled for us to "get down" right as we were going into it and before I knew it I was "down".  I had crouched down and when we hit the guide had thrown himself forward, landing himself basically on top of me and Chris had bailed out of the raft so his legs didn't get hurt by the guide.  You must know that our guide was a football player when he was younger so he was a stout guy with the arms twice the size of Chris'!  That was crazy to see how everyone ended up when we got through the rapid!  I think I know why the other guides didn't take their rafts through that :)

As we approached the take-out point, we got the chance to see the bridge from the water.  It was awesome to see it from yet another view!  I hope the picture on our water camera turns out since we took one of us with the bridge behind us.

And I thought the last rapid of the day was a lot of fun!  It seemed like the waves were bigger than the others that we had already done.  And there were several really high waves right in a row, so it really did feel like a water roller coaster!  It was probably one of my favorites of the day.

We had an absolute blast going through the class 3 thru 5 rapids on our way down the river! Why didn't we do this both days? Oh yeah, because I was a little unsure of what we were getting ourselves into :) It was great paddling and riding our way through the big rapids.  I think there were about 22 that we went through on that day.  And I did a lot better than I thought I would - I didn't fall out on any of the big rapids that day!
When we got back to the resort, I went down the zipline and huge slide at the lake while Chris went for a run.  They were a lot of fun!  They started about 2 to 3 stories up and then went down into the water.  The slide was much more fun since the zipline kind of pulled your bottoms off in the water if you weren't careful :)

After showering, we got to watch the "world premiere" of our video for the day.  It was great watching this video since we went through so many more rapids than the day before!  Then we had another great dinner - that night there was some steak that was delicious.  We made yet another campfire and enjoyed our last night of camping.

My bruise/cut from slipping on the rocks

Chris gathering sticks to make another fire :)

That's all for now.  This is so long that I'm splitting it up into 2 blog posts!  So you'll have to stay tuned to hear about our adventures on the trails before leaving WV and in Cincinnati :)