13 for 35 Hour Ocoee River / High Country Adventure

At 7:30am, on Sunday, June 30th, 7 thirteen year old boys (one my son), 2 sixteen year olds (one my daughter), 3 moms (one my wife), and 1 dad (yes, that's me); met in The Walker School parking lot and we jammed the 13 of us and our luggage into a SUV and mini-van, then we headed north two hours to the Georgia / Tennessee boarder, where we met our High Country guides, Frank and Lacey at a local Wendy's to start our adventure.

 
Caving was the first event in our journey.  Because of the advance notice that caving was muddy, the mothers passed on caving and headed into Chattanooga for lunch.  The ten of us going caving piled into the dirty and well-used High Country passenger van for the very short drive to 'Howard's Cave', and drove a half-mile from Wendy's to the cave.  
 
What is amazing is that 'Howard's Cave' is less than 30 yards from the road.  Our caving adventure was like being on another planet, and in just over two hours, we covered five plus miles underground.  The boys were both fast and enthusiastic, and Madison easily stayed with them.  I got very winded just keeping up with the energetic boys in the cave. 
 
This was my first time caving.  ‘Howard’s Cave’ starts at the mouth of a dry creek bed, and you wouldn't know it was a cave if you were standing right in front of it.   You start by crawling on your hands and knees on the dry and rocky creek bed for about 50 yards to enter the cave.  Once in the cave, the temperature is 59 degrees all year round, and has a muddy floor covered by a damp thick clay.   The experience was surreal for me because there is no wind, no sound, and no light.  At one point, we all shut off our headlamps and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. 
 
The boys LOVED the cave, crawling under, over, and threw the tunnels.  Our guide, Frank was fantastic, and he led the boys into each nook and cranny.  Frank tried to educated the boys that stalactites (hang tight to the ceiling) and stalagmites (might make it to the ceiling) are living organisms but the boys were just too excited to listen.  Lacey was the 'sweeper' hanging back with my daughter and I.  One really fun part for the boys was the section called the 'Meat Grinder', where climb down one hole in the cave and then back up another hole.  Madison and I were able to skip that secion and see Carson's tight fit in the picture.
 
Please note for my adventurous readers, a guide is necessary for multiple reasons: including gear, you definitely need a helmet as I demonstrated by banging my helmet against the cave walls and ceilings too many times to count; you need a headlamp not a flash light because you on your hands and knees to get through many sections of the cave; without an experienced guide, you can very easily get lost and the cave looks and feels very different when crawling into and out of the same tunnel; and lastly there are some deep holes in the cave, and our guides strategically assisted us through these treacherous sections.
 
Caving was fantastic, see our muddy and smiling faces.
 

After the cave, we piled into the van(now I understand why the van is so dirty) and headed into Chattanooga to find the mothers, then onto the High Country campground in Ocoee, TN.  After settling into our cabin, we put on our bathing suits and we headed to the pavilion for dinner.  Kathy, our leader and scheduler, knew that we would be hungry after caving, so she catered dinner from the Whitewater Grill.  The restaurant owner and his 6 year old son, Jeremiah,  served us a bounty of fried chicken, potato salad, summer squash, break, mac & cheese, and tea (both sweet and unsweet).  As we were packing up I innocently asked Jeremiah if he had any brothers and sisters, when to my surprise he said SIXTEEN.  I had to ask the dad if some were adopted, to which he said no, same mom, and that it helps to have seventeen kids to run a restaurant. 
 
After dinner, we piled back into the passenger van, now with a trailer of ten flat water kayaks to kayak on Lake Ocoee.  Our kayaking guides were Ben and Benji.  Ben is an expert whitewater kayaker and showed us an eskimo roll in his kayaking by flipping over and back effortlessly. 
 
The mothers joined us for the kayaking phase of our adventure.  We piled into single and double kayaks to paddle around the lake.  We paddled across the lake to where the boys had the most fun, a local rope swing.  Of the parents, Kathy went off the rope swing, not once but twice.

 







After racing back across the lake, we loaded 
back into the van to head back to our campsite for smores.  As expected the boys had a blast running around, making smores, letting their marsh mellows catch fire, putting a fake snake on me, and Remy wore his morphsuit,  and we were somehow able get all of them into their beds and sleeping bags by 11pm.  Most were still chatting but I was so exhausted, mostly from the caving, that I fell easily asleep.
 

At 8am on Monday morning, we had a quick breakfast, sang Happy 14th Birthday to Varun, then headed back down the pavilion for a crash course in whitewater rafting.  There were 9 rafts, 45 raftees, 9 rafting guides, 2 guide trainees, and 1 bus driver.  Frank our caving guide, was the leader of our whitewater expedition.  The pavilion has a raft on land, and Frank walked us through safety steps of rafting.  Somehow Frank was both serious and funny, as he explained the dangers of falling into the water, and the dangers of hitting another passenger with your paddle.  After Frank's safety review, we all piled into our hunter green painted school bus with the 9 green rafts strapped to the top.
 
As our bus pulled into the parking lot at the Ocoee Dam #2, it looked like a movie scene with all the different colored school buses with similar painted rafts, and people everywhere.  One of the guides said there are 24 different rafting companies with permits to run the Ocoee, the guide then pointed to park ranger at the top of the dam, who schedule the raft departures. 
 

There were thirteen people in our group and split into three different rafts.  In my raft was Christine, Madison, Sammy, myself, and our guide Benji.  What was very funny to me is that during flat water kayaking, it was hard to get two words out of Benji, and I assumed he was a quiet introvert; but when he was whitewater rafting he was so excited, he wouldn't stop talking, and a total extrovert.  I guess is that for a whitewater guide, flat water kayaking is just boring.
 

My favorite adventure by far was whitewater rafting the Ocoee River.  Seventeen summers earlier, my dad, brother, and family friends went on my first and only other white rafting trip down the Kennebec River in Maine.  The Middle Ocoee River offers the most continuous stretch of Class three and four rapids in the country. Tumbling through a spectacular scenic gorge in the Cherokee National Forest, the Middle Ocoee plunges 269 feet over five miles, where paddlers must maneuver around treacherous boulders, crashing waves and multiple drops over steep ledges.
 

Benji was a fantastic guide explaining each section of the river, and previewing how he was planning to take us through each rapid.  We successfully navigated each and every rapid, even doing 360 degree circles through one of the smaller rapids.  Benji is an expert rafting guide and at one point another raft on our High Country group got stuck on a rock, and Benji rammed our raft into theirs and freed them off the rock.  In another section Benji jumped off our raft onto a large rock sticking out of the river, ran up the rock, dove into the water and swam back to our raft.  In one section, Sammy and I jumped out of the raft to float down the river.  When  Madison tried to help Sammy back into the raft, he pulled her into the frigid water.
 

During one particular fierce set of rapids a person in another raft in our group fell out of the raft going through a rapid, and Benji steered our boat over to help the raftee out of the water.  In my enthusiasm to help, I accidentally hit Christine with my paddle when I reached into the water to help too. Fortunately for me Christine wasn't hurt.
 

  More good news, no one fell out of our raft, nor in our group of thirteen.
 
After successfully navigating the Middle Ocoee, we rapidly packed up the rafts and piled onto the school bus to head back to High County.  We then packed up our cabin, rejammed the 13 of us and our gear into one mini-van and one SUV, and headed back to  the Walker  School  in Marietta.  The Priests were back in our house by 6:30pm to complete our 35 hours journey. 
 
Ocoee  River Expeditioners:
 
8th Graders:
1. Andrew
2. Braden
3. Carson (my son)
4. Ewan
5. Hunter
6. Remy
7. Varun
11th Graders:
8. Madison (my daughter)
9. Sammy
Mothers:
10. Christine (my wife)
11. Kathy
12. Leanne
Dads:
13. Shaun (me)
 
One huge advantage of a 35 hour adventure, is that there was no drama with any of the teenagers nor adults. 

   A special thanks to Kathy Bowden, who put together the whole trip.