Our weekend at the river...well, BY the river

Nick and I have been planning a big trip to the Guadalupe River for a few months. We had a whole bunch of friends planning to come down and have been looking forward to a great river adventure. We headed out Friday afternoon...Nick, myself and my sister Christy. We were planning to meet up with all of our friends at our campsite. We loaded up the big green Jeep, turned on some Pat Green and REK and hit the road completely pumped up about the weekend ahead. Our spirits were a little dampened by all the rain we hit (pardon the pun). What should have been a 3 hour drive turned into 6 for everyone, whether coming from Houston or Dallas. The rains were hard, heavy and persistent. We turned off of the highway and were literally 15 minutes from the campsite when we got detoured due to flooded streets leading down to the river. Long story short, we eventually made our way to our campsite at around 5:00pm and began setting up our tents. By the way - thanks Kern family for letting us borrow your tent...it was the "castle" of our campsite!

Nick and I setting up camp in the rain...

My brother Eric and his girlfriend Keaton

We started a fire in the fire pit, that fortunately held up despite all the wet weather. Brent, Eric, and Keaton prepared some awesome burgers for all of us. As nightfall approached, more people joined us including Tamara and Scott, and Kyle and Jammi. We sat around the fire pit catching up, telling stories and just enjoying the good company. It was well after midnight before we all went to bed, and after a few hours of sleeping in the rain, we all got up and went to town for breakfast. Then we made a Walmart run and stocked up on supplies for the day. About this time we were joined by Gary and Kevin (who both work with Nick) and their significant others. Jammi bought a horseshoe set (which was a great idea...the boys really had fun with that), and Brent bought a wiffle ball bat, which was used until all the balls were beat so badly that they wouldn't fly any more. We returned to the campsite and just played in the rain until the sun FINALLY came out!


The sun came out and we all went down to the river. The night before, the river looked like white water rapids with all the flooding, but it had calmed down and receded quite a bit by Saturday afternoon. They never opened the river for floating, but we at least got to sit on the banks and dip our feet. We all cooled off and got a little tan (or burned!) and dreamed of being in tubes, floating down the river without a care in the world...it just wasn't in the cards for us this time. We had all planned to camp-out Saturday night, but by evening everyone was hot, damp, bitten to death by mosquitoes and ants, and just plain ready to sleep on a real bed in an air-conditioned room. Some went home, others stayed in a motel room. Where 24 hours before there were a whole bunch of gung-ho campers ready for anything, there were now only impressions in the grass from our tents, horseshoes and dirty feet (see below...I won't name who's feet those are, but if you were there you of course know who they belong to!) It was fun while it lasted, but camping all weekend without the perk of doing a 4-6 hour float on the river, I'm just going to say it...It isn't worth it!!

Those filthy feet I referred to earlier

Me with my siblings (minus one brother...Mike couldn't make it)