Digital Wilderness

August has been quite the busy month. Lots of travel, lots of adventures, lots of firsts…

The first week of August, fourteen friends from church and I piled into three vehicles and hit the road for West Virginia to raft down the New River.

We headed east to WV on Thursday afternoon, arriving at our destination – River Expeditions – at dinner time and set up camp. Our plan was to camp Thursday night, raft the river Friday morning, camp Friday night and head back to northern KY on Saturday.

Thankfully, there weren’t many people around when we arrived, so we were able to find a quiet, open spot toward the back of the campground with plenty of room to set up our “tent city.” We were very fortunate it wasn’t crowded – we needed a lot of room for our 8 tents.

After getting the tents set up, we focused on a building a fire, which took a while to get going since the wood was wet from a storm earlier in the day, but we prevailed, roasted hot dogs and s’mores and relaxed for the evening.

Around nine o’clock Friday morning, we hit the river. The weather was great – sunny and a little on the warm side, which would feel great once we were on the water. This was my third time rafting the New River, fourth time rafting overall (the other time was on the Arkansas River in Colorado). Though I had been on this river before, I’ve never had the same experience twice. The water level was on the low side, but that didn’t affect our experience at all.

The trip was about four and a half hours long, with a break for lunch along the river bank about half way through. A majority of the group had never been rafting before, but they all did great and enjoyed the experience. Only one person fell out of the raft I was in, and that was only after our guide “surfed” for the fourth time. We could tell he was trying to knock someone out.

One experience I had this time that I hadn’t in the past was the Halls of Karma. It was basically a whirlpool that when you jumped into it, would keep you down for a few seconds then pop you up down river.

After the rafting trip, we took a trip to the New River Gorge Bridge overlook. The bridge is the third largest arch bridge in the world, the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

Camping on Friday night was a completely different experience from Thursday night. It was packed! Tents were pitched in any space big enough to fit one. Lots of people stayed up late talking and making all kinds of racket, which didn’t bode well for our 6am wake-up call the next morning.

Kudos go out to Kristy, who not only survived and enjoyed her first rafting experience, but also her first camping experience! She’s a trooper!

All in all, another fun rafting adventure. Next year, it’s time to step it up a notch – Gauley River or bust!

See more pictures from the trip in the gallery.

Time for a quick update, just so the blog won’t get stale.

It’s been an awesome few days! Great times rafting in WV with a fun group of friends from church. Pictures are up in the gallery. We’re already planning to go back and challenge the Gauley, #2 in North America, maybe as early as this Fall.

Also had an awesome 4th of July weekend in Lexington. Great company and great memories! Resulted in delaying my trip to Maine by a day, but I’m totally okay with that. It’s worked out well that I haven’t had an reservations and such to worry about.

Realized today that the shoutbox isn’t working. That would explain why the last message was from a month ago…I’ll look into that later…

That’s all for now. Next update will probably be soon after I return from the road trip to Maine!

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a week or so now but got caught up in the overall busyness that tends to define my life these, contrary to my attempts to scale back, so it’s going to end up as a quick and dirty post instead. I apologize for any typos, spelling and grammatical errors!

Vacation, here I come!

July is going to start off with a bang! July 1st through July 12th are going to be some crazy but totally awesome days.

First up was the STARS day camp on July 1st. Basically, this is a day long activity camp put on by the STARS organization (read this previous post about STARS for more info about the org). This is the second year I’ve volunteered at the camp, and it was just as heart-wrenching at the first. It really pulls at the heart strings hearing the kids talk about their losses. The kids this year were GREAT! 35 attended the camp and with the exception of only one or two, they were all very well behaved. The camp basically consists of fun activities such as trampolines, wall climbing, arts and crafts, etc. that are the related back to grief, with the goal of helping the kids deal with losses. I worked a group of six 10 yr. olds, who had lost 3 fathers, 2 grandparents and a sister. Tough stuff, but most of the kids are strong and will make it okay. Though it’s an early and long day, it’s totally worth it.

Next up is a white water rafting adventure! A group of 7 from church is heading out to WV for 2 nights of camping and a rafting trip down the New River. The weather looks PERFECT! I had tried to plan a trip last year but it fell through. Not this year! WV, here we come!

We’re getting back from WV Saturday afternoon, then continuing my road trip adventures, I’ll be heading down to Lexington for a grill out and fireworks on Saturday, then back to Lexington on Sunday to visit Southland Christian Church, both with some great company!

Monday (or maybe Sunday evening), I’ll be doing something I’ve never done before – taking a vacation by myself. I’ll be packing up the car and heading for Maine! This is a trip I started looking into in 2005 but never could find the people to go. At the end of last year, while having a conversation with someone in my LifeGroup, I caught myself saying “One day” and “I hope to” and “I wish” concerning trips I wanted to take and things I wanted to do. I’ve grown frustrated trying to find people to go on trips so I decided I wasn’t going to wait any long. Originally, a group of 10 of us were supposed to go to Gatlinburg for a week, but as seems to the case often these days, it fell through. Having already asked for the time off, I decided I wasn’t going to sit at home for a week. Then Maine popped in my mind.

This trip is going to be a challenge for me. First, I’ve done very little planning. I barely have the route planned out. Those of you who know me know this is very uncharacteristic. It’s partly intentional. I haven’t had much time to plan, between my class (which ended last week), planning for rafting, stuff at church and trips out of time, but I also decided I didn’t want to be stressed by following a detailed, structured, scheduled agenda; instead, I want to relax and enjoy the trip and just “go with the flow.”

Another reason for this little planned and solo trip is that I want to spend time with God. We’ve gone through quite a bit this year and through my intentional busyness, I’ve often ignored him, avoided things and haven’t fully processed all he’s been teaching me. I’m packing a couple books on which I want to focus and take notes, so I’m looking forward to sitting out on the beach or on top of a mountain, enjoying his vacation and learning and growing from what he will teach me.

Of course, I’ve realized in the last couple of days that I do need to plan somewhat. I need to make reservations for some of the things I want to do, and I hear hotels are everywhere up there, and will be crowded this time of year, so I needed to try to plan out that part of the trip as much as I can.

I have a few destinations/activities in mind: Acadia National Park, Freeport (L.L. Bean store), Mt. Katahdyn (northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail), Portland (light house) and Bar Habor (whale watching). I’m also going to try to hit the states I have not yet visited while up in New England: Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hamphire and Vermont in addition to Maine. I hope to go geocaching in each of these states.

I’m going to try to be as minimalist as possible during my travels. I’m planning on taking a cooler and pack lunch meats and such for my meals as well as snacks with the intention of avoiding fast food as much as possible. I will definitely make room in the budget for a lobster dinner, though.

I’m also planning to avoid hotels for all but a couple nights. My camping gear will be making the trip with me, so I’ll be sleeping under the stars several of the nights.

That’s a quick rundown of my upcoming adventures. If you follow me on Facebook, watch for status updates and pictures throughout the trip. (Sorry, Twitterers, I won’t be posting there for safety reasons.)

As with my Shenandoah backpacking trip, I plan to keep a journal and post when I return, along with pictures.

Until I return, ciao!