It’s summer vacation time for us. When you farm, you take a vacation when you can get it. The rice needs to be at the right stage, and the water needs to be either held on the fields, or they need to be ready to drain. There’s a fine line between a rice farmer being crazy busy and being able to find a few days where you can breathe and take a little vacation.
When I was growing up, my Daddy would come home at lunch one day in the summer and say pack up, let’s go. So we would jump in the car, drive a few hours away to Silver Dollar City, and spend a few days in Branson. When we got to Branson we would drive down the 76 strip and choose what motel we wanted to stay in. As far as I knew, we never made a reservation ahead of time. My brother and I based our decision on a very important thing… we chose the motel based on the pool. When I was really young we liked to stay at Ben’s Wishing Well Motel. As we got older we moved up in the world and liked to stay at The Baldknobbers Motor Inn. I have such fond memories of those spontaneous trips. And maybe they weren’t spontaneous, maybe my parents had them planned and just didn’t tell us, but whatever it was, it was fun.
We thought it was important to take a vacation each summer, too, and one year, when our kids were little, we decided that we could get away a few days in late July. We didn’t have a lot of time or a lot of money, so our options were limited. We asked the kids what they wanted to do, and their answer was surprising to us… they wanted to rent a cabin in the woods, roast marshmallows on an open fire, and spend time in nature.
Okay, so we already live in the country and roast marshmallows regularly. But, still, overall, nature wasn’t really our vacation style… So, I expected them to ask to go to Silver Dollar City or Disney… but this was their request; it was in our budget and new for us, so we made it happen.
I found a nice little cabin in Jasper. It was near the Buffalo River. When I realized where we were going to be, I got a wild hair and decided we should float the Buffalo. If I could’ve captured my husband’s reaction when I told him what I wanted to do, I would be a rich woman. It was priceless. He asked, “Whitney, are you sure you want to do this?”
It was late July, so the river level was low. Therefore, it wasn’t the prime floating season. This meant there would be sections of the river where we would need to drag our canoe. My husband wasn’t even sure that floating would be possible. So, I called a few rental places in the area and found one that assured me we could float the river when we were there.
I excitedly shared with the kids that our adventure was going to be amazing… we would be staying in a cabin in the woods, we could hike, swim, roast marshmallows, and we were also going to float the Buffalo River in a canoe.
I was trying to be a fun mom. My idea of a vacation was a week at an outlet mall. This was so far out of my comfort zone. But I was committed. This was going to be amazing.
At this time, we were dedicated members of Tree Town Baptist. So we packed our car up, attended church services that Sunday morning, and then headed to Jasper.
We arrived at our cabin, which was just what the kids had requested. It was a log cabin in the woods. It had a fire pit, lots of poison ivy, a fireplace inside, a loft for the kids to sleep in, and it even had a shower curtain complete with bears and evergreen trees. It was…perfect.
We spent our first night in the cabin and got up the following day, ready for an adventure.
We packed a picnic lunch, put our cellphone in a ziplock bag, and gathered our towels, sunscreen, and lifejackets… we were ready.
We drove to the canoe rental place. We had never done anything remotely close to this, so I asked the owner all the questions. She assured us that it was a simple float… they would drop us off in one area and pick us up 5 hours later down the river. I asked her where the pickup would be, and she assured me I would just know. I was also a little concerned because there was rain in the forecast that day.
When I brought this up, she again assured me everything would be fine… they did this every day. We were going to have a great time, she said… we would only have to drag the canoe in a few places… it would be awesome.
They led us to a white van, and there waiting in the driver’s seat, was a boy who didn’t look to be more than 15 years old. He had a friend with him who was sitting on the passenger side. I didn’t know what marijuana smelled like back then, but they seemed extremely chill in a drug-induced sort of way. The teenage boy started the van, and away we went.
The Buffalo River is located in a somewhat mountainous area of Arkansas. The roads are winding… the boy driving didn’t seem to notice as we careened around the curves.
Finally, we were at the river… I only feared for my life about 10 times during the 15-minute ride.
The boys unloaded the canoes… two more people were going on this 5-hour float… they laid the canoes on the bank of the river and our paddles beside it… I began to ask more questions… they said, “You’ll figure it out,”… and they drove away.
This was going to be fun; this was going to be fun; this was going to be fun….. if I told myself this enough, I would believe it.
Let the adventure begin…
We piled in the canoe and began the float…
The river was beautiful, but it was barely flowing. We took in the sights around us; we were determined to embrace this.
We hadn’t been floating long when we noticed a beautiful creek running into the Buffalo. The kids wanted to stop and slide down the rocks, so we did. They would walk up the path, hop in the creek and ride it down into the river. They loved it! This was going to be a good day!
After about 30 minutes of playing in the creek, we told the kids that we needed to get back in the canoe and head down the river. They begrudgingly obliged.
As we were paddling away from the creek, we noticed a man walking through the woods with a camera.
It was a beautiful area, and I could understand why he would want to be taking pictures.
We continued down the river and found an excellent area to have our picnic lunch. We feasted on Vienna Sausages and Crackers. The kids swam a little, and then we headed out.
The farther we went down the river, the lower the water was, and the more we found ourselves dragging the canoe more than riding.
It was getting hot, my husband was tired of dragging the canoe, and the kids were tired of getting in and out of the canoe. So, when we were presented with two options, our thrill seeker side won over.
There before us was a shallow, rock-covered area, or to our left, there was swift running water that made a turn around the corner. The water was even white capping… it was almost like river rapids… we were excited… so we paddled toward the rushing water, waiting for the thrill of feeling the water under the canoe take us around the corner… but instead… we soon realized that just under that rushing water, what we couldn’t see was a large log.
The log caught the underside of the boat and swiftly turned the boat over… right onto my ankle. We all fell out… the canoe was lying on my ankle, our belongings were floating down the river, my husband’s shoe, his phone, our towels, what was left of our picnic lunch… there it went… down the river…
My husband quickly got the canoe off my ankle, my daughter helped me sit down and make sure nothing was broken, and my son swam down the river and grabbed as much of our stuff as he could…. We found everything but one of my husband’s shoes… but everything was soaked…
We pulled ourselves together and put everything back into the canoe… let the adventure continue… this was nothing but a setback…
We continued down the river… we had lots of ground to cover if we were going to make our pickup time… and we didn’t have any way to actually know what time it was… my husband’s phone was ruined… the ziplock bag would have protected it from a little moisture, but it didn’t protect it from an all-out dunking. Maybe if I had chosen a freezer bag instead of a sandwich bag… you live and learn.
As we traveled along, we began to hear thunder in the distance… surely this would go north of us… the lady did tell us that it would be fine. After all… these pop-up showers were never a big deal, she said…
Just as we had convinced ourselves that this storm would miss us, lightning struck right in front of our boat. And then again and again… I was terrified. We couldn’t continue to float in this water with lightning all around us, but what were we going to do?
We pulled the canoe to the water’s edge, tied up the boat, and climbed up the hill a little way to find shelter under an overhanging rock. Lightning continued to strike around us, but we felt pretty safe… until we noticed that we were sharing this little cave area with spiders… millions of them… should we stay under the rock and get bitten by a spider or go back to the boat and get struck by lightning… the spiders seemed the best choice at the moment… Our daughter, who was only about 6 years old at that time, began to cry. She had done her best to hold it together, but this day was already an adventure for her without these unforeseen setbacks. She cried quietly at first… just a few sniffles here and there…
We waited under that rock for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the lightning lessened, and my husband said we had to go if we would make it to our pickup in time. Against our better judgment, but not knowing what else we could do, we headed back to the canoe.
We climbed in and began to paddle when out of nowhere, the skies opened up, and we began to experience rain heavier than we had ever seen. It rained so hard that we had to dip water out of the canoe. My daughter was sitting in the very front of the canoe, and I was right behind her. This latest unexpected setback was more than she could take. She cried, she sniffled, she cried a little louder… and within a few minutes, she was wailing… complete with screaming… I knew we were going to die; I just knew it… you brought us out here to die, and now it’s going to happen… we are going to die.
What do you do in a situation like this… well, we did what all good parents do; my husband and I began to laugh uncontrollably… this only caused our daughter to wail louder.
Here we are, virgin Buffalo River floaters; we’ve had a capsized boat, lightning, rain, lost phones, lost shoes, wet towels, spiders… what else can you do but laugh?
We literally couldn’t see anything in front of us in this rain, we were soaked, and we were freezing…the rain finally stopped, and we realized that we were at our pickup area. Praise Jesus! We made it.
We wanted to stop for a while and just enjoy the river. The water felt nice and warm compared to the rain we just experienced… but alas, it could not happen because the two teenage boys were waiting for us with the white van. They were not too happy that we were late and rushed us along.
We climbed in the van, and the air conditioner was blasting… we didn’t even have a towel to wrap up in because they were all wet.
We shivered miserably on the return drive, once again wondering if we would make it back in one piece as the teenager haphazardly drove through the mountains.
We finally returned to the canoe rental place and loaded our wet stuff into our car. Then, we drove back to our cabin.
That little cabin in the woods looked like heaven. We couldn’t wait to get in and shower, warm up and put on dry clothes. But there was only one shower in this cabin in the woods, so we let the kids have the first showers, and my husband and I waited patiently.
We cooked hamburgers for dinner that night. We sat around the table, and while we ate, we relived our day floating the Buffalo. It had been a harrowing experience for us, unseasoned floaters. The kids swore we would never do this again for vacation but paused to remember how much they enjoyed playing in the creek. That part was fun.
My phone buzzed as a text message came through… my friend said, “we just saw ya’ll on the news.”
Say what? I assured her that we had been floating that day, and there was no way we were on the news…
She said, “I know it was you; you were wearing a sun visor and a pink tank top”…
She began to describe what I had worn that day to float the river… I was sure this was some kind of prank, but she sent me a link to the news story, and sure enough, there we were, plain as day, on video floating the Buffalo.
The man with the camera had been from a local news station. They were doing a story on Mill Creek… (the creek we enjoyed so much) … they were investigating water samples. They had found high amounts of raw sewage in the creek.
Raw sewage flowing down the creek right into the Buffalo… you know, flowing down that creek that we played in that day.
Surely not… this couldn’t be… but indeed, it was all true… we went to float the Buffalo, but instead, we floated Shit’s Creek….
When I got to Sunday School the next week, someone had anonymously gifted our family two rolls of toilet paper for our next trip to poo poo creek. To this day, I have no idea who that “gift” was from, but it was well played. I appreciated the humor behind it very much.
That vacation might have been the most disastrous one we ever took… but you know what… it’s the one we talk about the most…and we laugh until we cry… and tell our friends about it… the story is shared regularly.
I’ve posted so many sad, hurtful, angry things… lots of hurts, lots of pain… all necessary to share, but that’s not all I am…
I’m a real person. I’m a happy person with an amazing family…
sometimes the swift water is hiding a dangerous log beneath it,
sometimes the spiders are safer than lightning,
sometimes you can’t see through the rainstorm, and you are convinced you just might die…
and sometimes, when you look back on what you think was good, it was really just a stream of shit…
but… it’s still a story worth telling.
Until Next Time,
Whitney