We left Atlanta on Saturday morning around 9 am. We were fully charged up. Good breakfast, MTR "ready to eat" Bisibella bath, Pongal in the bag, bananas, Parle-G biscuits all set to go along with us. I gotta talk about the rental car here. It was a white colour,suzuki reno, small size and good for the mountain trip, we believed ;-)
Enter our companion: Lakshmi. Remember, the tamil movie "Padikadhavan"? Rajinikanth was a taxi driver in that movie and he used to "talk" to his taxi and call it "Lakshmi". We borrowed Lakshmi from our cousin Jana. It was a 4.4 inch Garmin GPS :-) So , hooked up Lakshmi to the windshield and gave her the address and said in Rajini style "Lakshmi, start". She started reading the route for us. Enroute, Lakshmi found a subway restaurant for us and we picked our lunch . We were just few minutes away from Hartford, TN.
Enter Hartford, TN: It was around 3:00 p.m, when we reached the pigeon river banks. I was surprised to see the flood of people there. There were numerous kayak and rafting boats and around 500 odd people bustling with energy. We ran into my husband's old friend Nikhil and his wife Durga. We exchanged pleasantries and checked-in for our 4:00 pm rafting trip.
After a delay of around 40 mts, we were ready to board the bus. This bus would take us to the upper Pigeon river and we would raft all the way down to the check-in center. The place was crazy and the raft guides were visibly exhausted with the flood of people showing up on that day. However everyone's enthusiasm kept them going.
We boarded the bus and were divided into group of 7-8 people. We were accompanied by a family of five. They were from Virginia and the kids Mikey and his younger sister were bubbling with enthusiasm. Our guide was Stewie and he was a medium built guy ; should be 24 yrs or so. He was making jokes with the youngest kid and trying to scare her. But she was a brave one. My husband and Dave took the front seats. Mikey and I took the next seats. The eldest daughter in Dave's family sat behind me with her mother on the other side. The brave kid sat on the last seat along with Stewie.
What an experience it was. We were screaming, splashing, panting sometimes and smiling all the time!
There were a couple of swirls where the raft would just seem to go under the water and we would all be splashed with the cold water. Stewie would then steer us from under and we'll be rolling on the surface of the water again!
After an hour and 20 minutes of screaming and adrenalin rush, we were on flat water again.
This is when the real adventure began for us! So, as if the rafting was not enough fun, a mischievous guide from another raft started pulling random guys into the water. it was fun to WATCH people scream as they get into the water until he grabbed me :-(
I was shouting " I donno to swim" and spat came the response "Oh yeah? Lemme see that" and there I was in the water panting and panicking. Everyone laughed at me for a while and then seeing that my scary face was not animated for a while, the panic struck them as well. Then the elder kid and Stewie pulled me into the raft. For a moment, everyone was waiting for my reaction. I went like " Where is the guy who pushed me in?" and he was getting uncomfortable with glares from people around and sighed relief when I retorted with a "Thank you man! It was fun". And my husband quipped " I wish someone took a picture of that!" . So everyone switched back to the original light mood and we ended our rafting
We were getting excited about about getting to Gatlinburg and the rafting increased our spirits as well as appetite.
It was around 6 p.m. and we jumped into the car and dreamt about "Apparent Seclusion" log cabin that was waiting for us in Gatlinburg, TN. The 25 mile drive was very scenic. The mountain ranges were mesmerising and the breeze was just good to refresh our tired bodies.
We were musing that it was enough shock for the day. Least did we know that a much bigger shock was was waiting for us at Gatlinburg!
T be continued..
