It has been close to a year- give or take a month, since my last confession I mean post, so please excuse the delay, but now I am back, feeling giddy and kinda silly. My kids have passed the diaper/dress me phase and can carry their own packs, walk their own distances, which has empowered our family adventures.
We did head back to Helen, Georgia for a spot of tubing, this time with our teen in tow, but it was obvious that the rippling rapids had become too tame, so we took a detour to Nantahala Gorge to experience our first whitewater rafting experience on the Nantahala River. Fear had never stopped us before, but our pint sized roller coaster rocker 8 year old lightweight had. All of the rafting companies specify ages (usually 10 and up or weight requirements.) A serendipitous experience- isn’t it always? That took us from a country road traffic jam to the best little BBQ shack in Franklin (more about that later), landed us with finding the Paddle Inn Rafting company (www.paddleInnRafting.com) whose age limit was 7- blessed be! Woohoo- were were going rafting! The aid of an iPhone map app led us into the gorge in North Carolina (and then stopped working, because apparently, even satellites don’t have a fix that deep in the gorge!)You can rent the Paddle Inn’s self-bailing rafts for extremely reasonable under $14 per person without a guide, however, having never experienced it before and with three kids of extremely different temperaments, we decided to hire a guide, and were assigned “Randy” to take us down the class III rapids.After the safety and pep talk, we loaded into an old bus to the dock to begin our adventure.