We survived!

This weekend, I went down to Scottsville, VA (an hour and a half from Richmond, VA) to go on a James River tubing trip in celebration of a friend's birthday.

Normally, I might have come back saying it was fun, we had some laughs, floated down the river, end of story.

Well, I CAN say we had some laughs and floated down the river, but the story doesn't end there. We survived a freak thunderstorm on our way! We were about 2/3 of the way down the river and the sun was shining. Moments later, it was pouring rain and booming thunder. Trying not to get struck by lightning, we paddled furiously to a little island in the river and waited in the mud until rescue came. Then we saw someone waving to us from the other side of the river. It was the driver of our rescue bus. We waddled all the way across the river with our tubes, against the current, in the mud, just to escape the thunder and lightning. Despite how muddy and drenched we were when we got to shore...all 15 of us survived!

I would definitely recommend tubing in the James to anyone looking for a summer adventure. And if it rains, that's just more adventure.

Great Falls hike

I had to get out of the city this weekend, so boyfriend and I took a short hike down in Great Falls park, which is just around the Beltway on the MD-VA border, if you're not familiar with it.

It's a fairly easy hike, with the most spectacular lookouts being accessible right from the visitor entrance area. It made the hike a bit anti-climactic, though, since the rest of our hike we were just walking in the woods, not going towards anything in particular. Pretty views though.

Panorama I took of the falls

Downstream from the falls

The gorge