We arrived at the meeting place for the
Northern Outdoors Water Rafting at 1771 US Route 201 in The Forks, ME at 4am this morning and slept in my car till 7am, when the
Kennebec River Pub and Brewery finally opened.
Heading inside, the breakfast available was in the form of a buffet. We initially thought that it came with the trip, but it turned out that we had to pay for it.
After filling our stomachs, it was time for the briefing. I had brought along shorts and a t-shirt for the day's events, but after feeling the cold weather, I decided that it was wise to rent the upper and lower body wetsuits for a mere $15 in order to keep warm. My other friends decided to tough it out instead, and would soon regret it.
After getting our helmets, life-jackets and paddles, we boarded our bus to head to the top of our journey, right after the
Harris Station Dam, the largest dam in Maine.
After another quick briefing by our guide for the day, we started carrying the raft down to the shore.
Rafting down the river was really fun. The guide knew his way around the various obstacles in the river very well, and I did not fall off the raft at all throughout the entire trip. There were some intense parts, and we all had our share of getting wet, but overall it was not as scary as I thought it would be. At the halfway mark, we stopped for lunch, with my friends and I having steak while others had fish or chicken. It was cool to do some barbecuing on the side of the river, on a beautiful day with the river flowing by. We also had GORP, a mixture of granola, coconut, raisins, oats, peanuts and M&Ms. Pictures of the food follow.
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| Metal Cup of lemonade |
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| GORP |
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| Caterpillar on our bench |
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| The Kennebec River |
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| My lunch |
After our lunch, which was actually really good for a medium well steak, we continued our journey down the river.
This part of the river was gentler, so our guide allowed us to take our helmets off, go swimming in the river, and go solo on kayaks. Thankfully, the water was not cold at all today, and it was really fun kayaking, using what I learned from coastal kayaking
a few weeks back to maximum effect. I even managed to stand on the kayak a few times. It was fun pushing my friend off the boat as well.
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| Pushing my friend off the boat |
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. We reached the end of our 12 mile journey 5 hours later far downstream, and after carrying our equipment back on shore, we boarded the bus back to the place we were at this morning.
After giving back all our equipment systematically and changing out of our wet clothes, it was now time to go find our campsite. The campsite was right next door, but we took forever to find the correct campsite as the map was poorly drawn. Thankfully, we managed to find it before the sun went down. After we set up our tents, we headed to nearby Bingham to get some stuff to start a fire, and meats, sausages and marshmallows to grill for dinner.
The views of the river while driving were fantastic, as shown below.
After bringing the stuff we bought back to our campsite, we set about starting a fire. It was pretty easy using the firestarters we bought. The only problem was, we did not have a grill, so we had to use rocks to support our skewers of food. As a result, our food often fell onto the coals below.
I tried to do something seemingly novel, wrapping bacon around marshmallows, but they did not turn out very well.
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| bacon wrapped marshmallows |
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| Our fire |
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| Cooking popcorn |
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| Nearing the end |
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| Fresh popcorn |
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| Artistic sausage |
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| Sausages on the fire |
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| Well cooked marshmallows |
Other than that though, I was glad to have my chef friend along, who knew how to cook the food well. Soon, it got too cold to stand around, so I decided to call it a night, heading to my tent and my snug sleeping bag.
With that, a great end to a great day of white water rafting, my first time ever.
