Buses and Boats and Boulders

We took a little trip yesterday. We drove along the Ocoee River, traveling from Cleveland, Tennessee through a little piece of North Carolina to Blairsville, Georgia. The road itself was the typical kind I have been forced to learn to navigate up here: narrow, winding, two-lane and filled with native drivers who are confident enough to travel fast. On this particular road, the anxiety factor was ramped up for several reasons.

First, on one side of the car was, duh, a river and on the other side was a 90-degree rock wall. Compound this with the fact that the right shoulder—more like a sliver of a hint of a right shoulder—was filled with vehicles that had brought hundreds of people out for a day of white water rafting. Huge buses, vans, cars, and trucks completely filled the space that should have been there as a "margin of error" lane. Not in Tennessee, my friend. Either stay in your lane or die. I think that's the state motto.

I honestly believe I would not have been rattled by any of this if it were not for my giant, strong, 50 year-old husband sitting in the passenger seat interjecting startled gasps and/or yelling my name at every hairpin turn or oncoming car. I tried to distract him with what was going on outside his window. The scenery was arresting. Impossibly tall mountains towered on either side of us, covered in pine trees except where dynamite and landslides had sheered off hunks of them, leaving jagged rock formations jutting out over our heads. The river was wide and swift. The rafts and kayaks making their way downstream were filled with happy, helmeted and life-jacketed adventurers who made me want to laugh with delight. It looked like so much fun. I would never get in that river, mind you, but my proverbial hat is off to those that do.

I kept telling my husband, "Look! Look! I'm missing everything! You have to look for me! Please look and tell me what you're seeing!" It was killing me to not be able to take it all in. There was one place where there was some sort of man-made waterfall that dropped about 12 feet and people in kayaks, rafts and canoes were lined up on the upper level. I couldn't figure out exactly what was going on there, but it looked awesome.  My husband was no help solving this mystery. He was too busy shrieking when the buses with river rafts on top of them would meet us coming around a sharp curve. Later, I heard him breathlessly tell the relatives in Blairsville, "These buses were HUGE and there were BOATS on top of them!!"

He drove on the way back so that I could look and he could feel like he was in control.