Sunday was the real “outdoor adventure” part of our trip to the middle part NC. On the agenda was the US National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, which is this huge, man-made facility that has all kinds of fun things like rafting, zip lining and a rock wall. Even though I am super scared of heights, I decided to give the rock climbing wall a shot.
(Note: That’s me in the yellow shirt)
It was at about this point where I started kind of having a mini freakout and told the guide to get me down ASAP. I think I was sort of psyching myself out about the whole thing because I needed to actually see how you went about getting down from the wall. Afterwards, I was determined to try again and get to the top. Unfortunately, there were a TON of little kids running around and while I was patiently waiting my turn, they kept jumping in front of me and cutting in line. I was annoyed, but, wasn’t going to get into a fight with a kid, so, I let it go. Danny, on the other hand, was livid that the parents of these children were not reigning them in and was about to go get into a confrontation. It was at about this point that I threw my gear off and decided that I was done trying to rock climb. It wasn’t worth the drama. One of these days i’ll give it another go – hopefully on a day where there are less stupid, bratty kids running around.
All in all, I give rock climing a thumbs up.
Later in the day, we went white water rafting in the man made class 1-4 rapids. We signed up for the “adventure rafting” – which after getting totally terrified in the safety lecture, we were all a little scared by. Sadly, I do not have any pictures of us doing the rafting as the rules involved “no loose articles” and frankly, I was so scared that even if I had taken my camera I probably would not have used it. After getting the hang of things (and getting soaking wet) we had a really good time. I would definitely try it again.
After rafting the rest of our group set out to do some mountain biking, zipling and hiking. At this point, Danny and I were both hungry and grumpy and set out the rest of the afternoon activities to grab a late lunch and relax. We spent a lot of time hanging out by the rapids and watching people fall out of their rafts. Funny how we were totally entertained by this – but, yet so scared about falling out when we were actually rafting.
Later we met up with our friends and headed back to Matt’s parents house after a long, fun filled day.
That evening we went out for a dinner at this really class place called T-Bonez on the Lake. It had all kinds of stuffed animal carcasses adorning the walls. We were celebrating because this guy –
…. had a birthday. After a (very) late dinner we hopped back on the boat and sped back to house so that Danny could open presents. What does the boy who has every electronic gadget known to man get from his friends on his birthday?
Diet Pepsi (of course)!
We could barely keep our eyes open at this point and pretty much crashed afterwards. So much for our grand plans of having a crazy party!
We woke up fairly early on Monday morning and hit the road. I am told that most of our friends hung out on the lake until that afternoon, but, we were anxious to get home and get some things done around the condo. When we got home, I found this little monkey hanging out on my bed…
….totally pooped from (what I imagine) was a long, fun weekend for her away from us at Dogs at Play.
All in all, it was a great weekend away with our friends. Danny keeps referring to it as our “mini-vacation” because it really was an awesome time.
