In July, we took a two week vacation. 

We hit the road with a rough itinerary and nothing but time on our hands.  And we had a lot of fun.

One of the places, and probably the favorite place we visited, was Eastern Tennessee.  We rented a cabin in Sevierville, near Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.  Oh what a cabin it was. 

Stepping into this cabin was like dying and going to cabin heaven.  The walls of glass!  The views!  The porch!  The wood and stone!  The rockers!  All I’m saying is, if heaven were a cabin, it would have been this one.

We spent four days exploring the Smokey Mountains and doing as much as we could there.

It is a pretty outdoorsy place.

And I’m not sure that we are exactly full on outdoorsy type people.  Maybe more middle of the road outdoorsy types.

Sitting on the beach under an umbrella is our idea of an outdoor vacation.

What I mean is, we are not the type that go on vacation to have some sort of outdoor adventure.

And yet, outdoor adventure is the name of the game in Eastern Tennessee. 

So we stepped up to the plate and found us some outdoor activities.

The first one being tubing.  Down a rocky river.  With your bum in a tube, rented from a place called the River Rat.  That should have been my first clue that maybe we didn’t have what it took to hang on the river. 

We drove to the outpost (isn’t that outdoorsy sounding?) and rented our tubes.  We had on our bathing suits, we were lathered up with sunscreen and wore Crocs.  Well, K and the kids wore Crocs.  I don’t do Crocs because they make my feet look too big.  I wore Keens.  Which took 4 days to dry.  Convenient.

After paying at the outpost and signing away our lives acknowledging that yes, we knew what we were doing in sending ourselves and our four young children perilously down a rocky, sometimes deep river with rushing currents, we grabbed some tubes and boarded a bus for the drop off point.

I was expecting something a little more defined as a drop off point.  But basically, the guy droves us about 5 miles up the road, pulled over on the shoulder and said “Get out.”  So we did.  And then we kind of slid down a small hill, avoiding trees branches and rocks, into the river.

And yes, we paid money to do it.  We are such tourists.

As we all slid down the steep slope into the rocky Pigeon River, I was optimistic at all the fun we were going to have.

Because we had never done anything like this before!

And it looked like so much fun!

And look!  Look how clean the water is!

And refreshing, too!

So we slapped our tubes into the river and sat on them.

And then a funny thing happened.

The kids started floating down the river.

K and I did not.

It was more like our tubes started scraping the rocks on the riverbed.

So as our children are making like Pocahontas and floating just around the riverbend, K and I start doing a little tube rocking shimmy, scrape your butt on the bottom type move. 

Just imagine some buff river guide guy with dreadlocks and Birkenstocks on the Outdoor Network who actually knows his way around a river, and we looked just like that.  Yeah.

Rock, shimmy, scrape.  Rock, shimmy, scrape.

K and I were not budging.

We were beached on the rocks.

(This is what it is supposed to be like going through the rapids, only due to low water levels, our rapids weren’t quite this rapid.  Hence all the rocking.  And shimmy-ing.  And scraping.) 

Since our children were ahead of us and out of sight, K and I knew we had no choice but to walk the river.  Walk down a slippery, rocky, river thru the moving current while lugging big rubber tubes.

It sounds kinda funny, but at this point I was mildly freaking out.  Because where where my children? 

I wish I could say that the river walking looked a bit more natural than the shimmy-ing and scraping of the river tubing.  But it did not.  It looked pathetic.  And K wants me to add that Crocs were not made for walking on wet rocks.  Because your feet slosh around in them.  And you could fall.

Thankfully, we made it past the rocky part, which I’m told is otherwise known as the rapids, although there was nothing rapid about them, and caught up with the kids who, thankfully, have watched Tarzan enough times to know how to grab onto a low hanging tree branch and hold on for dear life while waiting for us.

Their mama didn’t raise no fools.

Their mama apparently just lets them watch too many Disney movies.

Reunited and out of the rapids, we enjoyed the cool, relaxing, and extremely slow float down the river. 

Let me reiterate that.  The floating was pretty slow going.

Extremely slow as you can tell by the lack of current in this picture. 

(And no, this isn’t us either.  Because, Hello?  I am no where near coordinated enough to attempt to keep my camera dry during a water excursion such as this.)

Until we got to the next set of rapids.  And again, whoosh!  The kids sailed on thru a la Pocahontas. 

K and I?  Not so much.

We did a little better this time, we were actually able to stay on our tubes and with some strategic foot planting and shoving off we made it through.  Until K lost his balance in an especially rapid part of the rapids.  And fell completely backwards off his tube, losing his sunglasses in the process and hitting his head on a big rock.

My first reaction was to laugh.  Because it was like a scene from a cartoon in slow motion.

K was not laughing.

In between all the expletives I heard him yell, the word concussion may have come up.

After another long slow stretch, the kids decided they were bored.  And had had enough.  And wanted to get out. 

And if that had even been possible at this point, I would have seriously considered it. 

Before long, we came to another set of rapids.  And this time, we were staying together.  Or at least we tried to. 

Until I fell out of my tube.  And slammed my knee into a rock.  I was left with a gashed, bleeding knee with an actual skin flap that you could peel back to view the inside of my leg.

(FYI: the inside of my leg is white.  The fat is white.)

This time, it was K’s turn to laugh.  And ask how many stitches I thought I would need.

Oddly, I didn’t find it all that funny.

After about 3 hours of floating down the river, we decided to hop out and swim.  Because we were pretty much tubed out at this point, and just wanted to get back to the outpost.

I’m not even going to go into the part of the story that if you miss your exit off the river at the outpost you are on your way over a waterfall.

Thankfully, Pocahontas, Tarzan and the gang found the outpost.

We were wet, we were done, and we did indeed feel like river rats.

Concussed, bloody, old and fat river rats.

Who will be spending their next trip to Eastern Tennessee partaking in dry, indoor activities.

Like watching Disney movies.