The Weekend I Went Camping

You'll never guess what I did this weekend (unless you follow me on Instagram. In that case, you already know). I, Morgan Sparks, went camping this weekend. I know. I'm just as shocked about it as you are. You should also probably know that when I say camping I most certainly do not mean in a tent without air conditioner. I mean that I went camping with my husband and my in-laws in their air conditioned camper. 

Friday evening Steven and I drove to North Georgia to meet up with my in-laws for a weekend of camping in Blue Ridge. We didn't arrive until after 9:00 on Friday night, so to make up for lost time we stayed up talking around the campfire and playing cornhole until nearly 2:00am. 

Saturday's big adventure included tubing down the Toccoa River. I was definitely skeptical about the whole  tubing down the river idea, but we had a cooler full of beer, so I figured I would manage just fine. If you are unfamiliar with the Toccoa River like I was, let me just give you a little bit of insight. The river is controlled by dam. A dam in which they release daily and one that keeps the temperature of the river below 60 degrees for the trout. We managed to time our tubing trip (not so) perfectly, and left out minutes after they released the dam and, in turn, released a whole hell of a lot of freezing cold water right in our direction. It was cold. It was crazy cold. We grabbed a beer from the cooler, had a few laughs, and decided that we could manage the cold water for a couple of hours. Onward down (or was it up?) the river we went! 

Things were going great until we hit a current that took us directly underneath a tree with a bunch of limbs hanging down. I was so concerned with snakes at that very moment that I didn't even notice that a tree limb had slashed a huge hole into my tube. To say I panicked would be an understatement. It was cold, it was dirty, and there was no way in hell that I was going to end up in the water. 

My tube was losing air quickly, and I had to do something. Steven told me to jump in the tube with him, so as fast as I could manage to move, I did just that. Turns out, switching tubes in the middle of a river without actually getting into the water isn't as easy as you might imagine, and I may have ended up on my husband's lap in a very questionable position in front of my in-laws. #awkward

I somehow managed to quickly turn around so I was no longer straddling my husband in front of his parents and spent the remaining hour and a half lying between my husband's tube and my mother-in-law's tube trying my very best not to fall into the frigid river where I would most likely freeze to death on contact. Thankfully in the end, we somehow managed to make it to sweet, sweet land and as quickly as I jumped off my sinking raft, I jumped onto the glorious land. 

Yes, I will forever be scarred for life from that tubing trip, but I also haven't laughed that hard in a really long time. Despite certain events that took place on that two hour journey, we had a blast! I would do it again in a heartbeat (although next time I would prefer if I could manage to stay inside of my own tube for the duration of the trip).

Needless to say, I not only survived the Toccoa River, but I also survived a full weekend of camping (thanks in large part to an air conditioned camper). By the end of the weekend I was even making plans for our next camping trip. 

And yes, once again, I'm just as shocked as you are.