Day 11- By Olivia

The camp awoke at 7:30 this morning ready and eager for another day of paddling. After a quick breakfast of oatmeal and dried fruit, we packed up our gear,  climbed into our canoes and paddled through the rapids on the Confluence. The rapids throughout the day ranged from Class 1 to Class 2 and were awesome! Then again when you have my job and  you are in the bow seat, all you have to do is be the motor and occasionally perform a bow stroke or cross bow stroke. Basically I am the brawn and my partner, Tyler Biggs is the brain… ironic because he is the big and strong boy and I am the shrimpy little girl. Not saying that Tyler is unintelligent by any means, in fact he knows the most about rivers here, besides John Buford. I just find it entertaining that the small person is the motor and the larger person is the steerer. We stopped on an island called Turkey Island for lunch and to spend a little bit of time just playing around the in the water. Sadly there were no turkeys on the island, and nor was it shaped like a turkey so I cannot say that I know why it was named Turkey Island. Although it was really cool because if you sat with you feet in the water the little minnows would come and nibble on your feet. It tickled.  We climbed back into our canoes and paddled down the river to Mott’s Run Resevor to pick up Travis Festa who is Brevard College graduate and now works with the ACA (for those of you who don’t know, that’s the American Canoe Association) and was a WLEE major. We continued down the rapids with him leading and Tyler and I went swimming. Not the kind of “Haha I am going to swim la-tee-da” more of a our boat filled with water and we had to swim down the rapids holding onto the boat kind of way. Then we had to yank the thing up onto rocks and flip it over trying to get all the water out of it. Lesson of the day. Canoes filled with water are super heavy. We arrived at the campsite at about 3:00 and set up our tents and then had a lesson with Dr. Chandler about Civil War diseases. It was really interesting, did you know that 2/3 deaths in the Civil war were due to disease?  We had a delicious dinner of chili and then we walked to Carl’s. Carl’s is the most delicious soft serve ice cream parlor on the Eastern Seaboard. While there, Christina met a 3 year old boy named Lucas who decided that he was in love with her. He came and sat on her lap and everything. It was really adorable, we do have pictures.  We are preparing to go have our evening meeting and are all really excited to switch to Sea Kayaks tomorrow!