FUN FUN ! We went for a Kayak / Float Tube adventure on the Bogue Chitto River. My wife(Nonna) and I in our kayaks with Paul, his wife(Mimi),Andrew and cutie Hayley, all load up(stuffed) in my truck with five tubes and two kayaks on the rack. We sweet talked Mimi's stepfather(Al) into helping out with the arrangement by putting him in the front seat and stuffing Paul in the backseat with his two kids, Mimi, and Nonna. Thank the lord we married small women. Not to leave myself and Al out,the front seats were at the peak of forwardedness with me feeling like I'm in a go-cart with the steering wheel in my chest and poor Al with the glovebox in his knees. Then the wondering mines want to know, which bridge is it? Well the ranger said the one close to town!? What, how do you know what close is? Paul said I'm sure its marked with a sign. Al was familiar with the area and said it's just up the road a few miles. We came across several bridges for the backseat drivers to say, is this it, is this it, is this it, are we there yet ? Al said its the one with the hump that you want and we began to see small dirt roads on the side of the paved road we were on and the Head backseat driver said, hey this is the dirt road you want to get to the river on. Well I could see that the road he was talking about was not it, unless he wanted to go off a cliff of 30 foot,(I've been told that a few times). But in his defense, he was looking at Hayley's head most of the time stuffed in the backseat.
Then Al & I saw the hump bridge and another dirt road leading to the swift 2 to 3 mile per hour river of paradise. We piled out of the Family-Truckster into the sand to unload her to the river. We got to the river's edge to find the water was on the cool side for Paul to say that there will be shrinkage.
We floated and paddled for a few miles talking, laughing, just having a good o time when a rope swing came into view. Paul and his son Andrew decided to be the brave ones(ginea pigs) to gave it a rip, until Paul was at the peak of peaks and looked at the tree that he was to swing from. It looked like if you were to swing, you would hit the tree dead center like in the old cartoons and just slide down it's trunk like Wylie Coyote. I can hear the sound of that cartoon now. So in his best manly Father figure voice, I believe this is to be swung by the kids of someone else, I'll just leave it right here where they can find it. No one in our group called him Chicken.(right)
So we went a few more miles to find a less intimidating rope swing that the men enjoyed to its fullest(about 5 feet off the water). :thumbsup:
Well we paddled and floated, paddled and floated to the point of wonderment. Is this the right river? Did you see a sign at the bridge? Huh, yeah I saw a sign, Winn-Dixie. Yes, there was a sign Bogue Chitto River at the bridge, I saw it.(I hope it's right)
Did we take a wrong turn somewhere? No, there were no turns to make. Float, Float, paddle, paddle. Wondering minds want to know! Where are we? :WTF:
Every big sand bar along the river was held in high hopes that it was the state park beach where we could end this rachet abuse of my arms and the wonderment of trying to figure where we went wrong and why did we do the this to ourselves. We agreed that the first thing that we would see would be a pavilion with yellow tape that marked where the river had washed the bank out from under it. Float,float,paddle.
And then after giving up looking at yet another big sand bar, to everyone's amusement and pleasure, Paul says, hey there's a pavilion I bet that's the one at the state park. Well duh! I said to myself, we haven't seen nothing else but river and a few houses far off the water for miles.
But I said, yeah there's the yellow tape. Hot Damn! Then I felt a surge of energy to paddle like there was no tomorrow and until I felt the tug of two adults and an eight year old that where tied to to me for the last 3 miles of pure paddle hell.:hihi:
Then Paul said, I had faith in you the whole Time Steve! Never doubted you at all.
We made it back to the camp site to make the best hamburgers ever eaten.
FUN! FUN! FUN!
...but everyone has to start somewhere...I don't recall if I have any pics of the 71 prowler we spent the last 2 years camping in...it probably could have used a rebuild like you've done to yours...My brother has it now and will be camping with us next weekend...It is/was a good first camper to gauge whether or not you will get use out of spending x amount of dollar on a newer bigger better one ... I'll try to snap a few pics of it so we'll have them for memories and maybe post them up.