I originally wrote this last Thursday night...then I didn't make it up to the activity center to post it before we left.
BUT...here it is for your readg pleasure. I have some more comments when you're finished.
Why, oh WHY, did I wait until the age of 53 to take up tubing?
The Ladies and I went tubing today and I LOVED it. Went around the “Horseshoe” twice! I would have gone 3 times like Flo and LaP, but my knee just couldn't take the steep ramp to the “put in” spot nor the 200 yd. uphill climb back to the “station” again.
The hour ~ hour and a half it takes to complete the Horseshoe is just about perfect for a novice. Slow current at first to get you used to maneuvering your tube in and around the river. Then some gentle rapids, so you're not freaked out by them, and they teach you how to get off rocks if you get stuck.
Then you get to experience some more challenging rapids later on in the river. Rapids that are both more challenging and more thrilling. Rapids that spray you with cold water and fill your tube with cold river water.
And all the while...you're passing these beautiful riverfront houses. They have walls with tons of glass, or window walls, cantilevered decks, terraced yards. The Cypress trees along the banks still bear the marks of the flooding from '01 [or was it '02?] You can see the high water marks on the trunks...way up high, but they are there.
Then, about ¾'s of the way through the course, is this magnificent cliff on one side of the river. Sedimentary rock formations clearly visible thanks to the erosion of the river over 10, 20, 100? millennium. On the other side, is a HUGE hollow tree trunk that towers above the live trees growing around it. Az said she saw squirrels playing there on her first trip through, but I wasn't that lucky.
It was just so much fun...now I know what the Angel Baby Girl has been so enthused about when she's come back from HER tubin' trips.
I am still jazzed about tubin'. My knee is still hurtin, but ibuprofen is mostly handlin' the pain. The minor inflammation....is beginnin' to be worrisome after 5 days. But I am off to Killeen again on Wednesday, so it'll have to wait until after that to do something about it. Maybe its just the rain that's causin' an arthuritis flare-up, huh?
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5 comments:
That was SO much fun! Tubing is the best. I can't wait to go back for more!
See comment on previous post.
Dammit.
;)
Years ago went down the Guadalupe in rubber canoes with Dave, Doris and a bunch of her friends. I had a lot of fun,'cepting the all-nighter I pulled at the grad lab to make the trip possible. Dave and I rowed like crazy before lunch, then I crashed after lunch and barely survived the afternoon.
Floated the Comal back in July '07. Haven't done that since I was a wee lil' one. Know what helps me with the pain? Beer. Ice. Cold. Shiner. Beer. In a cooler tied up to the tube, or at the picnic table at our put in point.
Yes'm, we did have a grand ol' time! My cuts and scrapes and bruises are fairly well healed now, too. But I'm ready to go back!
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