It was decided for Daniel's birthday that it would be fun to float down a creek in some rafts.
At the last minute "creek" was replaced with "Flint River."
Let's explore this further.
At noon on Saturday I got a call from Adrian asking was I coming rafting. After staying out all night the night before because of my own bright idea to watch the sunrise from the mountain I was exhausted, but oddly enough, I decided to go anyway.
We all carpooled out to a drop off point on the Flint off Hwy 72 and began inflating our rafts and floats while a few people drove to Hwy 431 to leave a truck at the end point, somebody told the boys while they were dropping off the truck that the distance in floats would take six hours to cross. We don't feel at all discouraged by this. We were on the water by three and things seemed fine. The end point was supposed to be down river at a walking bridge. You can't miss it, was the general consensus as on the other side of the bridge it becomes sewage overflow and you can't go any farther.
The water is still ice cold this time of year, but in Alabama the sun is already sweltering hot so the cold water really isn't that bad. We ended up with a group of thirteen people spread out among nine rafts. On a four person raft we had Preet, Solaimon, and James (with a cooler tied to a rope lagging behind). In three two person rafts we had six people in pairs: Lindsey and Daniel (and some beer), Ashley (Solaimon's girlfriend) and her friend Tabatha, and two younger girls Charlotte and Ashley. Danny and Brian were each in single inner tube like rafts (each equipped with TWO cup holders). Joe was in an inner tube with a picture of a pink rat on the side that said "River Rat". Adrian was in a single person raft and I was in a tiny child's raft with cartoon kids drawn on the side.
I'm not going to bother to describe the order in which we were tied together because it changed so frequently. The first three hours went pretty well. There was some pretty funny occurrences like when the river first forks there were some men fishing on the shore and Solaimon yells to them, "Where is the Flint River?" and the man yells back, "You're on it!" Then Solaimon points down the direction the current is taking us and says, "Does it go this way?" and the man yells back, dripping with sarcasm, "Yeah."
The view is nice and the river is pretty calm. We hit a few areas of fast current and they're a nice change from just floating. It's a beautiful day to spend floating downstream.
The river is COLD. I end up in Adrian's raft with him after a lot of switching around and a lot of people getting in and out to swim. The ride starts to get miserably cold halfway through.
We got separated in two parties a number of times in that first three hours and our group, who was ahead, finally had to stop off when Charlotte and Ashley (our martyrs who kept getting stuck on EVERYTHING) managed to get their raft draped over a log, poking a hole in it.
The first half of the journey had been uneventful (other than Lindsey apparently falling face first into the river - which I missed) we hadn't seen any wildlife - with the exception of a dragonfly that followed us for a while and the only signs of civilization we had witnessed were some kiyakers and a submerged truck in the water. The only mishaps thus far had been just about everybody who had cigarettes, losing their cigarettes to the water, and I think maybe a cell phone was taken under in all that.
We stopped off at a clearing on the bank to try and patch and re-inflate their quickly deflating raft while everyone took a bathroom break. The other group had stopped off sometime back, and they had the air pump, so we waited for their arrival. We they float up, we can't get the pump to work so we start doubling up and end up with people all switched around.
At the break we could see a road, and for a moment considered walking back because we had already been on the river for so long. We decided to forge ahead.
Eventually Adrian, Joe, Brian and I tie off separately. Danny remains untied and floating freely, and the others tie themselves together.
Let's examine for a moment Danny. Danny remained untied from everybody for the majority of the trip. He floated along in his single, recliner-shaped raft with a beer in his hand for hours never showing any concern for the terrain or current. It was hilarious.
The river gets more winding on the second half and provides more obstacles of dams and fallen trees. After a series of odd forks, most blocked by dams we come to a fallen tree the reaches across the whole river. We float up, get on the tree, move our rafts over, get back in, and continue onward. The second group, with more people, bigger rafts, and more alcohol consumption, gets hung up here and this is where the largest separation occurs.
We float on for a while with no sign of the end point and really no concern for that fact. Then the sun starts to set.
Previous to the sunset we come through two sharps turns in the river caused by fallen trees damming up part of the river. Since our group was so small we were able to successfully maneuver through this without injury to us or our rafts and end up on the other side as it continues to get dark.
We knew, of course, that this journey would end in the dark but at the same time we were thinking the journey would be less tiring than this. We being paddling to try to speed up our progress. Eventually, we're in total darkness and we can see and hear beavers splashing around us.
We're freezing and feeling like we've gotten lost on a river that flows in one direction and we come to a serious fork in the river. It's dark and we have no idea where to go. We pull off to the side and climb up a steep incline through tall grass and end in a field. We can see a neighborhood and a road, presumably 431 and it's maybe three miles from the river. To the left of the field we're standing in the a flooded swamp-like part of the field with a thicket of tree and brush behind it, separating it from the river.
We have no cell phones, no lighter, and no idea where anyone else had gotten to. We decide our best course of action is probably to pull out and walk but we can't leave the others. So, we stand on the bank clad together trying to warm up and then retreat back to our rafts to follow the voices of our friends that we can hear down the river. As we float out to the center to try and be visible we can hear them better and start to see faint outlines of their convoy in the distance. Adrian yells that they need to tie to us so we can make a plan without everybody floating off and James yells back, "We can't tie to you, our rafts are busted."
In the minutes that follow, we learn that at the final sharp turns we hit as we were losing daylight they came through in near complete darkness and were thrown up against the dam of trees by the current busting their largest raft. At this point they start swamping each other's rafts and four of their people: Solaimon, Preet, and the two younger girls jump ship onto the bank.
We're down far too many rafts to double up anymore and even if we were considering continuing in the water, this was no longer an option. We tie up and pull ourselves to shore but have floated farther down then the first stop we had made and end up in a treacherous area of land.
Right as someone makes it to the top and sees that we are now IN the thicket that was previously to our left, the last people our bailing out of the rafts and everything is being cut loose. We take everything out of the rafts and decide what we can deal with carrying and what we can deal with leaving. Everybody leaves something. I leave my pants, they are soaking wet and I have previously shed them to keep from being any colder and it's not worth the effort to bring them. At the top of the hill the leaders are debating whether or not we can make it through. Word gets passed down that we can't go this way, as it hits the bottom the hill, James yells back, "We have no choice, I've let the rafts go."
With no choice but to go on, we start climbing through this thicket with is made primarily of thorns. We're close enough to the city that the sky is purple so visibility is not completely lost but you still can't really see more than three feet in front of you. Everyone is trying to yell back to the others as to what they're encountering, "Thorns to your left," "Duck under this," and "Watch underfoot."
Right as you come out of the thicket the first thing to greet you is the squish sound as your foot lands in warm swampy water. You forgot about the swamp, didn't you? The only upside I can say about the swamp water is that it was warm. It was so warm like bathwater, but it smelled like sewage. I took my flip flops off because the suction of the mud was going to take them if I didn't trek through barefoot. Lindsey lost her shoes to the swamp because she didn't hear me yell back to go barefoot.
The water gets to be waist deep at the worst point and I think that, for me, was right around my breaking point. It is very hard to stay calm when walking through warm, swampy, smelly water clad only in a bikini and a tank top. Right as I come of the swamp I step into a sink hole and fall backwards into a thorn bush and almost go completely underwater. Luckily, Brian caught me.
After the swamp is some muddy rocky uphill climbing and then cutting through a field of hard sharp grass. As we make it out of this field onto a makeshift trail we hear Solaimon yelling. He is too far to make out anything he's saying, and vice versa, but we do realize that he's on the OTHER SIDE of the river.
There's some arguing about whether or not to go back, and should we all go back, who should go back, or just to keep moving forward. We decide the best bet is to head for the lights and find a phone. Adrian and James run ahead to find the way and then come back to guide the rest through. The first people to make it out are me, James, Brian, and Ashley. Ashley and James start running up to houses as Brian and I enjoy being on pavement as opposed to bare Earth.
We all assume Adrian has went back to guide the others and Ashley finds someone who answers the door. After a few moments of the woman acting like we're lepers she calls the police to come and help us. Brian and I sit on the sidewalk and enjoy not being in a swamp. The woman's husband and her three kids (who couldn't be more excited) go off with a flashlight to help everyone else out of the field and by the time they get back we're all giving our names to the cops as well as the names of the missing. This is when we learn that Adrian went back alone to find Solaimon, Preet, and the girls.
Search and rescue is called and the original lost four are found almost immediately. By this point, we're all in the back of cop cars heading toward a central meeting point. The cop my group was with was insane. He gave Ash his last cigarette and told us he'd offer us some vodka and Mountain Dew but he was on his last little bit. He also cussed his Sargent for going to wrong way out of the neighborhood, "God help him, you gotta love him but he's dumb as shit sometimes," and told us how he could really go for a Lorcet right about now. Search and rescue says they have voice contact with Adrian and he is across from them on the river. They tell him to stay put but shortly after cannot find him.
They reunite our parties and everyone sorts out their stories while search and rescue hunts for Adrian. We sat in the search and rescue vehicles for what seemed like forever. They wouldn't allow anybody to leave, but one of the younger girls' mother showed up and then left to get us drinks and some sweatpants and t-shirts. Finally, they release Daniel, Lindsey, and James to go pick up the vehicles at the drop off point. Shortly after, we get a call from the three saying they have found Adrian.
He swam back up river all the way to the drop off point and started a fire under the bridge while he waited for us to return. Eventually, we find out that he couldn't understand what the rescue party was telling him to do, and to him, they seemingly just disappeared.
After the police report, everyone is released and we all start heading home, at midnight.
Not one person got bit by a snake. It's amazing, through the miles of river, yards of tall grass, and brief stent in a lukewarm pond, no one even saw a snake. Everyone is scratched up. Some have poison ivy. Some have sun burn. Some have been half eaten by mosquitoes. But no one went to the hospital, no one died, and everybody pretty much agreed that this was still a lot of fun.
