Picture this: seven people, three kayaks, two canoes, three cars, an odd assortment of life jackets, and paddles from my dad's college days. It took us two hours to get the cars loaded, unloaded, and rearranged between the put-in and the get-out. Lo and behold, it was time to begin the family river trip. Which is when the thunder started exploding from the dark, scary clouds that we had been so cheerfully ignoring as they rolled in. Nevertheless, we hopped into the river (as all the other people at the park scurried out) and began paddling furiously away from the storm.
I could see my mom gritting her teeth, really not sure if she wanted to the the "responsible parent" who made my super excited dad park his canoe, or the parent that let us all get struck by lightning.
I was leading the pack, mainly because I haven't kayaked in ten years and the faster I paddled, the less time I had to be nervous that I was going to flip over and get eaten by a fish. We got a good twenty yards before the rain started and my dad's common sense got the best of him and he yelled, "Hey let's pull in and give it a few minutes."
We huddled under a tree for twenty minutes in a torrential downpour before deciding that this rain delay was going to interfere with our cookout. So with that, we loaded up all three kayaks, two canoes, three cars, and seven soggy muddy people and headed home to grill ribs and chicken.
All loaded up. (Still sunny.)
Excited dad
Excited mom
Excited boats
We had about 30 minutes to kill while the rest of the family shuffled cars around after dropping the boats off.
The longer we waited, the more creative we got.
Some of us did not get creative.
The threatening cloud. Eeek.
Sadly, I do not have any pictures after the storm started, nor do I have any of half the family under the canoe teepee while the other half of us picked up the cars. But rest assured it was funny.
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