Tubing Down the Red

Ah, tubing down the river.

Sounds peaceful doesn't it.

Well, you've never been on a trip with my dh!

There we were five kids, two adults, and several small suitcases.

"What are the suitcases for?"

That was his first mistake. Assuming that we knew what to do. None of us had ever ventured on rafts going down a river. We needed clothes for the next day. He didn't tell us to get the stuff together beforehand. Well, the small suitcases were loaded in the rafts.

We had two rafts tied together, another mistake, but the reasoning seemed good at the time. We didn't want to have the kids in one raft going faster than the second raft. At least that was my thought. The kids jumped from one raft to another during the extremely long trip. (That was another mistake.)

It was really nice. We set off around ten in the morning. (Mistake. We should have left earlier.)

It was smoothing. The Red River was flowing around bends in the river. (Another mistake.) There weren't any people on the river besides us. We saw a few on the bank, but that was it.

We ate lunch while floating, and time passed.

Our youngest son leapt from one raft to the other, and missed. I did tell you that the rafts were tied together. Well, he disappeared under the water between the two rafts and I could feel him as he came up under my raft. Being a mom, I threw myself into the water and rescued him.

Since I was wet, I thought that riding on a life preserver in the water would be fun, so I held the end of the rope in one hand and positioned my derriere on the life preserver and floated downward with just my shoulders and head out of the water.

Everything was going nicely except for the barge parked on the bank. For some reason the river pulled us closer and closer to the barge, with me in the middle. Before I would have my face scraped along the side of it, I hopped off the life preserver, and while holding it in one hand and the rope in the other, managed to get myself hooked up underneath one of the rafts.

My husband thought that was funny when I finally sputtered upward, gasping for breath.

We decided to let the kids play awhile on the bank of the river. Big mistake.

As two of the kids (the youngest) ran on top of the bank, the middle kid decided to walk across the ground by the river and immediately sunk up to his hips in mud.

I was back on my life preserver, in the water. My hubby was in one raft, our eldest daughter with him, and our eldest boy in the other...and the rope tying the two rafts together hit a snag.

My hubby grabbed an oar, stood up and was trying to dislodge the snag, when his raft suddenly stopped dead in the water, throwing him off.

It was beautiful how his body flew up in the air, turning a complete circle, as he still held onto the oar.

He came up from under the water screaming to "cut the rope".

The eldest son, cut the rope. The eldest daughter was in the loose raft without a paddle.

It was an adventurous trip...

Needless to say:
We ran out of drinks.
The suitcase contents were drenched.
Everyone was damp.
The loops and turns in the river threw us way off schedule to reach our camp.
Night fell.
And the bugs came out.
Biting in places that weren't even exposed!
We finally saw a light.
Hubby didn't want to stop, but we were paddling like crazy.
He didn't stand a chance.
It wasn't our camp, but gracious people who took us in, fed us, loaned us towels, and drove us to our camp.

We haven't gone tubing again.

I wonder why? LOL