Since our last rafting trip, my friends and I were all yearning for more and higher category rapids. With another great group buy deal, we picked a weekend and I started planning our adventure with camping (my first time!) and white water rafting in the Ottawa River.

Day 1 – Saturday June 25, 2011 – Camping @ Bon Echo

We left bright and early to make way to Bon Echo provincial park where we would be spending the night camping. When we arrived, we bought firewood, set up a tarp and assembled our tent.

We went for a short hike to see the North Beach. It was beautiful and very relaxing to see.

Next time, I want to rent a kayak or canoe and see the rocks up close. During our hike, we saw some great greenery and this branch that looked like it was barely on. We shook it and it didn’t fall!

Everyone else was exhausted and we didn’t take the cliff top hike to see the park from up high but we did go to a viewpoint that was closer.

I went for a jog while Chris & Chauncey “camped” I explored the showers and outhouses and I was impressed!  It was all flushing and quite clean… Didn’t smell at all. I took a nap with the soothing nature sounds and gentle rain dripping on our tent.

Chi & Livi arrived so we started the fire and helped them set up the tent. Setting up the fire was fun, the boys couldn’t get it to work… We had to borrow our neighbors’ dull axe and chop the larger firewood smaller. Once we got the fire going, we cooked our burgers and sausages over the fire!

After our first bag of firewood, we found out that we had gotten two bags of kindling to help start the fire and one bag of firewood. We clearly didn’t need to axe the firewood into kindling! Oh well, now we know.

It got dark fast and we were running out of wood. We made s’mores around the fire with jumbo sized marshmallows. It created quite a mess.

We wanted to keep the fire going so Chi went to ask our neighbours I’d we could buy some wood from them… He got a gigantic tree branch instead and they told him to burn that. So our goal that night was to burn it in half. We used smaller tree branches and pine needles we found around the area! It was pointless but totally fun! The fire got super huge, even more than before with the bought firewood. However, we couldn’t get the gigantic branch to burn into half.

Before we called it a night, Sabrina and I decided to go to the bathroom first… It was pitch dark and we only had a tiny flashlight. We screamed a couple of times from the shadows and noises and because we weren’t sure which way to go. Fun though in its own way.

Day 1 – Sunday June 26, 2011 – Rafting at Wilderness Tours

We drove early to Wilderness Tours which was about 2 hour drive away from Bon Echo. Checked-in and geared up.

Our first rapid was the BIGGEST one –Screaming Beaver. We were pros since we had prior experience haha so we knew what to expect. It was a crazyyyyy category 4.5 (Our last one was Category 3). No one fell off but we saw the other boats and at least half of the boats out there lost someone. Some of them even tipped and fell over. We did search and rescue to save them too!

After another rapid and in calm water, we were encouraged to just jump in the water using the raft as a trampoline.

We stopped for BBQ lunch while strong swimmers were encouraged to ‘Body Surf’. Now I was NO strong swimmer but decided I could do this… Haha not a good idea… This was literally lying back on a smaller rapids and “surfing” it. Yup I drank water and didn’t take breaths at the right time. It was the hardest I had to swim (with a heavy wet suit jacket and water shoes)… sooo this is how it feels to drown or fall into the rapids… Eck, it definitely scared me a bit and I don’t think I would have done it again.

We started with some calm water and mini-rapids… where suddenly Chris randomly fell it. It was soooo funny. I think he was sitting too close to the edge.

Next, we hit up the ‘Colosseum’ which was another big strong rapid. Now I was scared to fall in because you have to swim HARD right… and after that body surfing I don’t think I can swim anymore. Luckily I didn’t fall in and no one did either.

Strong swimmers could now jump off a cliff and swim. The current was fast and I was too tired from the last. Look way to hard. Olivia and Chauncey did the jump though.

One last chance to dip in the water and just hang on to the chicken rope (a rope on the side of the boat). I was the only one on the left side and everyone else was on the right.

We helped lift the boat back on a truck and then headed back to the resort to shower and change. It was a great outdoor adventure weekend and so much fun with great company.