The Green River Narrows

Hi, this is Grace again, and I get to write about one of the coolest things I've ever done! My dad, sister, and I went to see the Green Race in Saluda, NC. It was a 45 minute drive to where the Green Race would take place. There were lines of cars parked on the side of the road so my dad just parked at the first spot he found. 

We figured we'd just walk up the road to the trail that would lead to the race. Big mistake!  We started walking and walking and still walking. It was interesting though to look at the license plates because a lot of them were from different states. The farthest ones were from Wyoming, Colorado  Massachusetts, and Maine. 

After about twenty minutes, we reached the actual trail to walk down to the river.  We walked along a beautiful trail and it was so much fun. The best part was near the end though, well it was fun for me anyways. At this part we veered off the nice big trail that was fairly easy to walk on and took a very steep hill down. It was great because I love to climb. At the bottom we jumped a little creek and after walking a bit more, we sat down to watch the race. 

It was amazing!!! Now note we weren't watching from the beginning of the race, because it was very crowded, so what we got to see was someone suddenly coming around a corner and penciling down the waterfall. They'd disappear for a couple seconds then suddenly we'd see them again at the next rapid. 

This rapid was interesting because there were three sections of water going down each one with different levels of water rushing through. In one funny instance, a boater reached this rapid and was planning to take the one with the medium amount water,but a previous boater swam there and his boat was now at the bottom of that rapid. So the boater refused to go down there. Then one of the safety guys went over and pulled him over to the rapid with the least amount of water. There was even a boat with a messed up nose.

After watching from that vantage point for a little while, we decided to walk up a little farther. It was so crowded that Lauryl and I couldn't see a thing. So I found the best seat in the house and laid on this leaning tree to watch the boaters go down. After watching for several hours we decided to head home for dinner. Apparently everybody else did too because we got stuck in a traffic jam in the middle of the woods. 

We finally made it back up the hill we originally went down, which wasn't as fun to climb up as down. We then had to walk the whole way back up the trail and the road before we reached the truck. We stopped for dinner at The Waffle House on our way home. When we got home we were all exhausted. I have to say though, it was totally worth it!  You can look up the Green Race on facebook or check out the website at http://greenrace.amongstit.com/ .