Canoeing on The San Marcos River

Yesterday was a loooong day. I went canoeing on the San Marcos river with four boys and two adults, all from my church. Since I was the only girl attending the all day activity I was allowed to invite a friend, but unfortunately she got sick at the last moment. That left me stuck with two seventh grade boys, and two ninth grade boys. Hooray! We left the church at 10:00, and the bus ride to San Marcos was only livable because I was listening to the latest US world cup game. (Which by the way they tied)! By the time we got to the check-in place where we would get our canoes, it was about 10:40. We ate our packed lunches, (mine reminded me a little too much of my usual school lunch) and then began canoeing.
I started out with one of the eighth grade boys as the chaperone had assigned canoes. We paddled for about a mile, and then reached a spot where you were allowed to swim. There were three shoots in the swimming hole. They were kind of like rapids, but you slid down the rocks and then the super strong current shot you through the water to the next shoot. Apart from almost drowning three times and getting quite a lot of water up my nose it was really fun. After cooling off in the refreshing water we continued our journey down the San Marcos river. I had switched canoes, so I was now with one of the chaperones. We were entering the more foresty part of the river, and there were many overhanging branches. Most of which had spiders and caterpillars hanging in them, and they would drop on your head if you went under them.
After a while without seeing the other three canoes the chaperone and I began wondering if something had happened. We waited for about ten minutes and only one of the canoes showed up with the eighth graders. We all decided to retrace our steps and find the two lost canoes. When all four of us had canoed for about another ten minutes the chaperone called the other chaperone to find out what was holding them up. Apparently the two seventh graders had “accidentally” flipped their canoe when they both leaned to their far left to avoid coming in contact with some low branches. When we arrived at the scene of the crime the two boys were treading water. The water in this part of the river was murky brown, and who knows what could be under there. Once we had rescued the both boys and flipped the canoe we continued down the river. One of the seventh graders had climbed into the back of my canoe, and was currently telling me to paddle only on the right side because when I switched sides it confused him. But I wasn’t paying him much attention because at the moment I was desperately trying to avoid spiders dropping out of nowhere and crawling up my legs.
I am going to skip ahead to the last part of the trip since the rest only consists of rescuing a lost inner tube that got stuck, for a group of people floating down the river with a cooler of beer, lowering the canoes over the huge dam in the middle of the river, and continuing to watch our creepy crawlies. (a.k.a. bugs).
When we finished canoeing we returned the canoes, and set up the grill and picnic table for dinner. We were having hot dogs and chicken. (I know, a weird combination). While dinner was being made by one of the chaperones, all of the kids went down to the river to swim in the rapids, hit each other with the beach ball, (I can assure you that was not me...) and skip rocks. When dinner was ready we dragged our sore bodies up the hill and served ourselves. Dinner would have been very enjoyable since we were cooled off from the water and it wasn’t sizzling hot anymore, except that there were a couple billion flies at the camp ground, and you had to constantly shoo them away only for them to fly back again.
When we were done eating we went to town to buy marshmallows and firewood at Wal-Mart, and believe it or not, they didn’t have firewood! And to think they had everything that existed in that one store! Once back at the camp ground everyone pitched in to help find sticks and bark for the fire and then began roasting the marshmallows. It was a fun and eventful evening.
When we arrived back it the church, it was closing in on 9:00. Moms scolded kids for not putting on enough sunscreen, chaperones cleaned out the van, and kids said goodbye to one another. I was soooo exhausted when I got home I watched Harry Potter 3. :)