As the day ends we find ourselves setting up camp along the Tellico River in Eastern Tennessee. After getting up this morning to a wonderful breakfast made by Allie's mom in Cleveland, we drove northeast to the Tellico River for an adventurous day. The day was cold, felt a little like Maine. There was a lot of "It sure ain't warm" from Dave. The Tellico is a southeastern classic, class IV creek with some good ledge drops about 10 feet, a 15 footer and a sweet rapid at the bottom. Jane and Sarah learned to boof waterfalls today! We had some carnage...Sarah jumped out of a boat backwards over a waterfall (Mama Ebel, it wasn't that big, I promise) and Dave, trying to help, landed on top of Sarah's melon in the hole. Very exciting. But we recovered and Sarah had a clean boof later on (see pictures to follow). Jane penciled in off the 15 foot drop, diving deep into the water and popping up-success! Dave and Noah rain the drop a couple times and are thinking about free-wheeling off it tomorrow. Another little swim for Sarah (it was actually little, Mama Ebel) sent everyone chasing a boat, Jane losing her paddle, Allie hucking her paddle on the shore to grab Jane's, Jane almost swimming by getting caught on a tree branch...and Sarah arriving to the scene to see Jane up the creek without a paddle and a swamped boat. Luckily, Sarah had seen Allie's paddle and was able to hand it off to Jane. It was a very exciting run at a higher river level since it rained last night. We're getting lucky! Yay free flowing rivers.

We then went to the super savers grocery store and got some great deals on food, then went to the dollar store, bought some flotation devices for future use and some great fish sippy cups with curly straws.

We're going to run the river again in the morning and then head to the Nolichuky to do a play run. We'll be bopping around northeastern TN and NC for the next few days because everything is running down this way. Allie had to leave us to go home to study for her comps to graduate from Sewanee :( but she was a great guide today.

Off for now, photos to follow another time but right now we're stealing internet and think we should go.