What a day!

I started Father's Day 2011 by going to church.  Now when you are off the floor from guffawing and you have wiped the tears of laughter from your eyes, focus your attention back to your computer screen...I will continue...still waiting... come on, get it together...okay.


I previously mentioned one of our past canoe instructors was about to move into his own church as their full time pastor.  Well he was speaking at a very small service, held by the Nantahala River this morning and we wanted to support and check him out.  (Really, I went to church.)  As expected he did a fine job and we wished him well in this next chapter in his life as he steps away from NOC.  What was interesting to me is that it was held in a bar and grill, open air type place called the Pourover Pub.  A pourover is a large rock in the river that is above the surface of the water, but because of the flow of the water, the water pours over it, sometimes making it hard to see and you usually want to avoid it.  I persevered through it and like I mentioned, wished him well. (This counts as church...really!)

Following my yearly church appearance, we headed upstream to try fishing for awhile.  What makes this noteworthy is that the Nany is a river that is in a sense turned "on" and "off" each day.  This river is used to produce electricity, but the power company has an agreement to let a certain amount of water out each day for recreational purposes...rafting.  It also continues to let some water out at all times for the river to maintain the life in it, but it is minimal.  My goal was to fish the river before it would rise for the day.  Well as luck would have it or in this case, the power company would have it, I had just started when the sound of the river changed.  I looked down at my feet and saw the water rising, which means that the rafts would soon be on their way.  So, fishing was short lived today.

Shortly after this photo was taken, the water would
rise a couple of feet to cover where I was standing.

We left the river and headed up to Bunny's cabin only to find her in her garden toiling away, putting some tomato plants in the ground.  It was agreed that we would meet back up to paddle the Nany later in the afternoon.  

As we headed back to the trailer to see what the animals were up to (cards, pool party, drunken rowdiness...you never know, they have surprised us before), we decided to quench a curiosity we'd had since arriving at out RV park that is sandwiched between two flea markets (a few miles a part), one of which is about the length of 2 football fields.  What a gold mine!

We never saw "Uncle Bill," but his flea market is second to none!

I am at one end of the "market" and you can see Miki (center)
rushing in to see what we can take back to fill the trailer with.
Now this is shopping!

With elbows being thrown, tripping at every corner, even bra
snapping by the most vicious.  This was serious business.

Who would miss perusing the geographical hair clip center of America?

I scored these for Christmas presents!

To top it off, there was flea market food.  Breakfast for $1.49,
a hotdog for just $1...once this gets out, they'll need to hire more help...
for sure.

We escaped Uncle Bill's clutches with a few dollars to get home on and off to the bat trailer to prepare for our river trip.

After a scattered thunderstorm postponed our launch for an hour, we finally got on the water and paddled in our inflatable kayak, the 8 miles from the put in down to NOC.  The water added to the river each day comes from the bottom of a dam, so it is very cold.  We wear waterproof tops and bottoms to protect us from the shock of the cold water as we get splashed in the rapids.

Having worked up an appetite, Bunny took us to diner at Relia's Garden.  This is a restaurant on site at NOC and was named for one of the co-founders of NOC (She too was on the pontoon picnic, Payson Kennedy's wife).  There is a garden outside the restaurant that does grow many herbs and flowers used by the chef.  When we attended our canoe clinics here, we ate our meals at Relia's unless we were out on the river.

Here are the happy paddlers seated on the deck at Relia's Garden.

Due to either hypothermia setting in from our recent run down the river or the giddy-ness of filling our empty stomachs, dinner got out of hand when time to order.  It started with a smoked trout spread on small slices of French bread along with collard greens and corn cakes...remember, we are in the south.  After our salads were inhaled, salmon, pork chops, and shrimp found their way to our table.  Not to be gastrointestinally satisfied at this point, the dessert tray appeared with three options of which we got one of each...chocolate silk pie, banana pudding, and peach creme brulee...all of which were unfreakingbelievable!  Having picked each dessert container clean, like vultures on roadkill, we requested a stomach pump and wheel barrow to get us to our cars.

All that was left of the dessert feeding frenzy, a happy plate and...
oops we missed a drop of banana pudding.  Excuse me, I'll be right back.

How can it get any better?  After reeling from such an exciting day, we may not get up tomorrow, and this may be my last blog...