Whitewater Rafting on the Lower Yough

The long days of summer are officially here, meaning outdoor activities are an absolute must. Back on Monday we had a church softball game at Bellefonte First Baptist. They have the prettiest setting for a field I’ve seen, as the field is up on a plateau, so out behind left and center field you see Bald Eagle Mountain rising up another few hundred feet, and then behind the field you can see all of Happy Valley, and Nittany Mountain on the other side of the valley. So I was really looking forward to playing there again, even if I wasn’t expecting us to have a chance to win (last year when we played them at their field we lost 36-7 in five innings!). Adam gave me the start in the leadoff spot in the first half playing right-center field, but I only managed to go 1-for-2 with a groundout to third and a single to short center. We played pretty good defense and held their offense down to something reasonable (only one home run), but our offense just couldn’t scratch together more than two consecutive hits in an inning; it always seemed we were hitting the ball right at their defenders. As a result, we still got mercied after 5 innings like last year, except this time the score was much more reasonable at 11-1 (we kept playing through the top of the 7th, when the score reached 14-3). Next up is a trip to Centre Hall to play the team we beat in the first week of the season for our only victory so far. It’d be nice to get back on the winning track.

On Wednesday evening I went to team meteo IM softball practice, which involved a bit more running around and deep throws from the outfield than usual, since Walter & Nat were the only two others to make it this week. Right after softball then I went to play some tennis with Ben. I hadn’t played him since last year, and while I think I’ve improved since last year, he still smoked me in three sets, 6-0, 6-1, 6-1. Despite my unforced errors that started mounting late in the third set, I still had lots of fun. Maybe I’ll be able to keep improving and post a better challenge against Ben later this summer. 🙂
Yesterday a big group of us took the day off from Walker to do something heaps more fun: whitewater rafting! We drove almost three hours down to the Lower Youghiogheny River (YAHK-ah-GAY-nee), a Class III river at Ohiopyle State Park in southwestern PA. After some trouble that Anke, Dave, Kerrie & I had with finding the place (Mapquest tried to send us offroading, onto an unmarked country/forest road that started as gravel but quickly changed to grass — fortunately we missed the turn and managed to ask a country reverend for different directions a mile or two later), we finally got there 15 minutes late (meaning I didn’t have time to put on sunscreen). They gave us some basic instructions on what and what not to do out on the water (such as NEVER try to stand up in the river if you fall out of the raft), and then it was time to go rafting! We split up into two rafts (Justin captained the raft with Aviva, Dave, Anke, Jeff and me in it, and Steph captained the raft with Jon, Shannon, Jerry, Kerrie and Bob in it), and had tons of fun! The guides (in separate kayaks) stopped us usually between every set of rapids to keep the whole 11:30 group together (there were probably 20 or so rafts total), which was a little frustrating, but on the other hand it was nice to have breaks every so often. Justin did a really good job of captaining our raft, and we only managed to get stuck on a handful of rocks (the river was really low for this time of year), and usually wound up making it through the rapids without a problem, often passing several (stuck) rafts along the way. Dave was completely flipped out of our raft once, and I kind of fell out twice. By “kind of,” I mean that my legs were still in the raft but I was jolted out of the raft so that my back was in the water as we were going through some rapids — kinda fun! 🙂 There was a raft with some boy scouts (probably 14-16 years old) with a pirate flag (and associated pirate songs and sounds) that were pretty fun too, we kept bumping into them and a couple times they tried to board our raft unsuccessfully (for one of those they thought we had stolen their pirate flag, hehe). Justin tried to do the same at one point, launching a sneak attack on them by swimming completely under another raft, haha. When it was all said and done we had rafted 7.5 miles down the Lower Yough, dropping an average of 25 feet per mile (next year we might consider doing the Upper Youghiogheny, which drops 120 feet per mile and is a Class IV river). I’d never been whitewater rafting before either, so this was a great first experience! In our about six hours out there I also got pretty badly sunburned on my upper arms, and knees/lower thighs, so even though that’s still a bit irritating, the whole whitewater rafting trip was so worth it! I had heaps of fun, I’d totally do it again! Some of our group decided to stick around and camp out after rafting, but I elected to head back to State College with Jeff, Bob, Justin & Aviva. I knew I’d be tired and exhausted enough (and sunburned enough) that I’d be better off resting in my own bed, instead of being probably uncomfortable camping. In any case, it sure beat sitting in Walker all day!