I mentioned in another post that I've been doing a book study on Crazy Love with a group of girls every Monday night. This past weekend to celebrate the end of the summer and also the end of our book study, six of us planned a camping/whitewater rafting trip on the Ocoee River. Well...God had other plans. We left Pensacola on Friday at around 1pm and drove up to Tennessee, what should have been a 7 hour car ride somehow turned into a 10 hour trek up to Benton, TN only to find that there were NO campsites anywhere. I mean literally not a single campsite in 3 different campgrounds. So we turned around and drove another hour and a some change back to Chattanooga to crash at my mom's friend Rodney's house. I was lucky enough to get to hardcore snuggle with my sweet friend Bayleigh Boles on the couch while most everyone else slept in the king size bed upstairs....still not sure how that happened. Anyway, we woke up the next morning and drove an hour back to Benton for our first rafting trip. After getting there we realized we had an HOUR to kill before our reservation...obnoxious, but finally after waiting for what seemed like forever we got on the bus to go to the river. The Ocoee is split up into 3 different sections, the upper, middle and lower, the upper and middle have rapids and the lower is pretty still and good for tubing. On Saturday we were going to raft the middle, we met our guide Curly (who we all had a pretty legit crush on) and managed to raft the whole middle section without falling out of the boat or getting any serious injuries (in spite of going through the rapid called 6 Broken Noses.) After getting back on the road to Chattanooga we stopped at the Choo Choo Dive Center to pick up Rodney and head back to his house. Since we were "fake camping" we decided to cook the food we brought to for our nonexistent campsite. Rodney built a fire (which sounded like "far" with his East Tennessee accent) and Molli McMilion, my mom and I made a fabulous chicken burrito dinner, recipe courtesy of our super outdoorsy friend Nathan Hicks of Higher Ground USA. You'll need: yellow rice, canned chicken, black beans, tortillas and salsa. Whether camping or cooking in a kitchen, this recipe is so easy! Throw the rice in a big pot and cook it about halfway (I think) then start throwing in the canned chicken (canned because you're camping and can't bring regular raw chicken), we made the beans in a separate pot because some of us (me) don't like beans. After the chicken and rice have cooked, line a bowl with a tortilla and fill it up with chicken and rice then top it with salsa...trust me, it's awesome.
All day long Rodney had been talking about this amazing dessert he was going to teach us how to make called a "Banana Boat," so we all gathered in his kitchen and watched him give the official banana boat tutorial. This dessert is SO good, it's perfect camping food but Rodney told us he ocassionally makes it in the oven too. You'll need: bananas (duh), tin foil and whatever kind of filling you want, we used Nutella, peanut butter, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and marshmallows.
Step 1: Using a knife, peel back a strip of banana peel about an inch wide, leaving one end still attached to the banana
Step 2: Cut out and remove a wedge of the banana.
Step 3: Fill the hole with your favorite junk food! (I went really heavy on the Nutella right here)
Step 4: Replace the banana peel and wrap the whole thing in foil.
Step 5: Place on the hot coals of a campfire (or in an oven) for at least five minutes.
Step 6: Peel off the foil and loose banana peel and eat it with a spoon!
This was seriously the one of the best things I've ever eaten. We had a blast sitting around the campfire listening to Molli quote the Sandlot ("You're killing me Smalls! First you take the graham, then you put the chocolate on the graham...") and laughing about our best, worst trip ever. The next morning we woke up, packed up the cars and headed back to the river to raft the upper part, which also happens to be the same part they rafted in the 1996 Olympics. We requested Curly again (because he was a hottie) and began our trip down the river. Now, we told Curly not to go easy on us, we said we wanted the rough and tumble ride....and he gave us what we asked for. We got stuck on rocks, did 360's in rapids and at one point we all had to jump into the front of the boat to get out of a sticky situation (resulting in me having to bust out my knee brace.) But we had the best time! We got out and swam in the freezing cold water and sang songs until Curly was probably ready to throw us overboard. We cracked jokes about hitting each other with our paddles and occasionally followed through on those jokes. After leaving the river and hitting the road, we finally made it back to Pensacola around 10pm on Sunday night. We spent so much time planning this trip only to have to turn out completely different than any of us could have imagined. We learned about making the best of a frustrating situation, being loyal sisters in Christ and ultimately I think the biggest lesson we learned was that God is going to be glorified no matter what hard we try to make everything about ourselves. We all got cut down a few notches this weekend and walked away with a different idea of what crazy love is all about, it's about a crazy, out of control love for not only God but each other. I'm so thankful for the girls that went on this trip: Bayleigh Boles, Ashton Mosley, Debbie Norris (aka Mommy,) Paitra Prim and Molli McMilion; and for the all of the other girls that couldn't make it on the trip but were part of this book study. Go check out Higher Ground if you're interested in an awesome outdoors adventure! http://www.hgusa.org/index.php
If you're interested in rafting check out Sunburst Adventures!!
And if you're ever in Chattanooga and feel the need to go diving, go see my mom's friends at Choo Choo Dive Center!
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