White Water – about a journey on White water rafting

Our raft is rocked violently was we crash into the raging current and lone rocks. We paddle at hard as we can to keep our craft from smashing into the jagged rocks along the shore waiting to devour us like a great white shark. Our adrenaline is pumping as it does for anyone experiencing his or her first White Water Rafting trip. A small trip to North Carolina with my family turned out to be one of my best-remembered experiences.

I push off from the shore and hop into the raft as I feel my shoe drag in the cold water and soak my sock. As I looked around I noticed that the scenery between in the valley was like that off of a postcard, cloudless blue sky, plant and wild life everywhere, it was amazing. Our guide, a short medium build size man with black hair, explained the procedures and rules to us as we lazily drifted down the calm of the river for the next fifteen minutes. We were told we were going to be shooting through 3 major falls, between eight and twelve feet high, throughout our trip, which lasted the entire day, and in between we would be having our rest periods and many smaller falls. There were also three other families with us on our little venture along the white water in other rafts. As we drifted along, we talked with our guide to get to know him a little better and enjoyed the scenery, which stayed as beautiful throughout the trip. Our guide told us that we would be starting off our trip with one of our first major falls and that we would be approaching very soon. Before we rounded the bend to the falls, everything was silent except for the roar of the waterfall a head, its thunder echoing off of the steep walls that surrounded us; this was going to be fun.

Just seconds from the fall, our guide yelled for us to keep one foot secure under the middle of the raft so we stay in, not more than one second went by when I suddenly felt like the world had dropped out from underneath me. I looked forward to see the winding river what appeared to be off in the distance as we began to plunge down the spewing falls. I was expecting a hard impact and when in fact we had a rather landing due to the falls breaking our fall near the bottom so we basically rolled off the tumbling water. However, as soon as we hit the entire raft was trenched in the icy water that saved us. After that adrenaline rush, we waited for the three other rafts to have their go as the thunderous falls, then continued on down the river enjoy the rolling we felt as we went zooming back and forth across the water without much friction trying to avoid the jagged rocks that awaited to gouge our raft. After about forty-five minutes of zooming along the river, we came to another calm; this is where we stopped to enjoy our lunch that was packed in watertight containers on each of the four rafts.

After a leisurely lunch of PB&J sandwiches and fruit punch drinks, we continued through the calm water until we can to yet another rolling plains of white water. It felt as though this trip of the quick rapids only took a few minutes, because we had done this once before, when it actually took us even longer than the first one. We soon came to the second and third falls around yet another bend. The last two falls were actually just one giant fall, however, there was flat rock between the two making it seem like two falls instead. We had to take the fall at an angle, so when we landed on the middle section, which was merely rock jutting out from the middle of the falls, we would turn and veer to the right so we could continue down the S-shaped fall. We did with much success and little chance of staying dry, I felt as though I had been sitting in a pool for days.

After that, it was basically just calm drifting and talking with our raft mates, enjoying the scenery. As we continued down, the steep walls slowly began to widen and open a little as we neared the mouth of the river into what seemed like a giant lake. And just before the walls go to about half of what they were at the beginning, they disappeared and we popped out into the lake. We paddle for about two minutes until we came to a boat ramp where the busses were waiting to tot us away back home.