West Va, Mountain Mama, Take Me Home.....

So this weekend was the big “bachelor/bachelorette” party for Donnie Biggs, and his fiancée, Meghan Montgomery. However, in a decision that everyone supported, rather than the normal and totally cliché party plans, we all decided to get together, and have a wedding party gathering, in Fayetteville, WV for some whiteater rafting and camping. Personally, I take a little pride in the trip as Im the one who did the research, planning, and found ahome for us, and wound up making sure everything was tied down prior to all of us arriving. Logistical planning props to me, Ill take what I can get.
I arrived on Friday evening about 5:30, after seven and a half hours on the road, and Donnie, and his fiancée and two others in the group arrived shortly after, and it was just the five of us for a bit, as others trickled in throughout the evening, coming from Pennsylvania and other parts of VA. I won the “traveled the furthest” award, but the PA folks were close. I was also the only Front Royal person there other than Donnie, all the guys in his wedding parties are non FR friends of his, but I didn’t feel left out by any means, Donnie’s non FR buds are just like him, cool, down to earth and good decent dudes.
We set up shop at a campsite, and as soon as we were all settled, and started cooking food, the rain started. Luckily we had a canopy of trees, but that didn’t shield us for too long, as the heavens opened up. Im wet in most of the pictures, although being dry wasn’t much of an option the entire weekend.
Saturday we did the lower portion of the New River, and hit one Class V rapid, the highest in the class system, which the guides say is pretty arbitrary anyway. I was in the front of the boat with Donnie, and the two of us got to be the ones who saw the boat actually drop into the rapids….pretty intimidating, but someone has to do it. I may have uttered a few expletives now and then when I realized that I was headed straight into water going about 30 miles an hour-I even smacked Donnie in the arm with my paddle, which he repaid me for later. I can say with pride that I didn’t get thrown from the boat, it tried to throw me in a few times, but I managed to stay in the boat and roll with it. Even our guide got tossed….not fun turning back and seeing no captain of the ship. Grab the gun boys, the general is down, and your in charge now is what I was thinking…
The river was awesome, and I did have some reservations about the whole thing, having never done it, but I can say with no hesitation Id do it again in a split second. It was an awesome time, and the guides are great, it really had a 4H Camp for Adults feel to the whole weekend, I picked the outfitter at random, and I think I wound up with a pretty good one. Our guide was actually doing her first un-chaperoned trip, she was recently certified and we were the first group she got. Yay, what luck we have. She was pretty intense, but I would be too if it were my first time, and all the other guides were watching to make sure I didn’t screw up. Unfortunately we don’t have any pics of the actual rafting trip, we didn’t have waterproof cams, and the whole “buy a pic of you on the river” is a little too touristy for me, but I found some stuff online of what we were dealing with, the spot known as Upper Railroad, Donnie and I sat in the very front of the raft, so we were the first two to experience that water up close…..Pretty unnerving, but I loved it…
Post-river activities were great, we ate some dinner the outfitter provided for us, they even had a hang out bar kind of place, and the guides hung out as well, and everyone jammed to some live bluegrass all night, a downright hootenanny if you ask me, was awesome. I realized that if I lived near a river, and could be a guide, it would be a pretty nice life….spend the day on the river, come back, wind down with some live bluegrass, wake up and do it all over again…….Anyway, a good weekend, a long drive back, and back to the corporate world tomorrow, which, seems kind of lame after being outside, and once again getting some time in WV, which I might at some point adopt as my second home state, was nice to go into the New River Gorge on Route 19 in Bluefield with Country Roads playing on the radio…….