After we got the lay of the land on Friday we planned that we would have an activity packed Saturday. Our plan was to take a boat shuttle of sorts across to a smallish island where we could do some biking and hiking. There were 3 shuttles, one at 9, noon and 3pm. If you missed the 3pm home well, you were stuck there. For real, they weren't coming back to pick you up. One cool thing about the island was that they allowed "open" backpacking. Meaning that you didn't need to make a reservation for a specific site. You could simply take the shuttle over, walk around and set up camp wherever you'd like. Such a cool thing! Don't be surprised in a year from now when I'm blogging about our backpacking adventure there (Jamie and Zach, I'm looking at you!).
Our plan was to take the 9am shuttle to the island and stay there until 3. Then, we had roughly 2 hours to get to the dock where our boat tour left from. We'd signed up for the sunset cruise, more on that in a few. At 8 am when Ryan's alarm clock went off and he was trying to convince me to get out from under the warm blankets I told him he was a NUT! I'd gone to bed earlier than the rest (who's surprised) because I had gotten a pretty bad cold the following night. We thought we'd fixed the heat and it ran perfectly for about 2 hours. When the rest of the group came to bed around 2am we realized that the heat was no longer working. Toph figured out that it worked on the car battery, so we turned the car on, let the heat run for 10-15 minutes and figured we'd have to tough it through the second night without heat. So, like I said, when Ryan was all ready to get the crew moving to make that 9am boat to the island we were less than motivated. I can't tell you how happy I was when the rest of the crew vetoed the 9am tour and Ryan climbed back in bed. We slept for a few more hours, woke up, scrambled some eggs and bacon and had a nice relaxing morning.
While we were cooking breakfast I made another (maybe the 10th) phone call to Cruise America to either try and fix our heat, or at least start talking refunds. Long story short, after another hour or so of Toph on the phone with the company, we figured out how to fix the heat. THANK THE LORD!! I couldn't wait to sleep in a nice warm camper, but first we had a ton of fun planned. Enough with all these words right? You guys came here to see pictures so pictures are what you are going to get.
Here is Lindsay (ie. DT Chalupa) and I posing while we wait for our shuttle boat to the island. We took the noon shuttle so we had 3 hours to explore the island and see the sites before we needed to head back. Since we had plans for the evening and not a single piece of overnight gear we knew we needed to be back in time to catch that 3 pm shuttle home.
We decided on a 12 mile bike trail and were on our merry way. The trail was not well marked and we ended up missing our turn at one point but we figured it out. It cost us about 2 miles but no biggie. I think the highlight of the trip was when we hit an actual mountain biking section. I think Sarah and Lindsay are officially in love. DTC was actually pricing out mountain bikes on the way home. We had a ton of fun and it was great to show some of our friends some new experiences. Sarah had a much more enjoyable ride once Ryan raised her bike seat for probably the first time in 10 years. It was like a whole new riding experience for her.
Anyways, we were of course extra aware of time as we didn't want to miss that boat so we didn't do much exploring aside from our bike ride but we had a great time. And, like I said, Ryan and I are super excited to go back and backpack that island again next year.
Check out the cool rock formation Ryan made while we waited for the boat to take us back home.
We had less than an hour to get back to the RV and get dinner made before we left for our boat cruise so we were glad we'd cooked up some meatballs the night before. We tossed some noodles in the pot, warmed some sauce and had a nice dinner of Spaghetti and meatballs before our boat tour.
The tour said we could bring our own snacks and drinks (non-alcoholic of course), so we filled our water bottles with mint lemonade (plus Vodka, of course), packed some chips and snacks, and we were on our way. The boat trip was amazing and we so glad we did it. The campers next to us convinced us that we should do it. We weren't sure because it wasn't super cheap ($35 per person) but they told us the sunset cruise was amazing and we decided we were on vacation so why the heck not. TOTALLY worth every dollar we spent and more probably. One of the coolest parts was they had a live bluegrass band on our boat. They were trying it out for a few days to see how people responded and we were so glad we were the lucky boat they choose to test it out on. I know you're all sick of listening to me talk so sit tight, lots of pictures and very few words follow.
This is probably one of the most true to life pictures I got. It's impossible to capture the beauty of film, but you can certainly see all the colors and beauty of it. I'm serious guys, put this on your bucket lists. It was amazing!
I wish I could share a quick video with you all from the boat tour. It was a little snip of the bluegrass band with the rocks in the background. Alas, I can't find the file right now. But, luckily I uploaded it to facebook when I shot it so if you're interested feel free to check my facebook page, the video is there for you.
I've got one more post to do from the RV trip and I promise it will be up for you tomorrow. For now, enjoy and check back tomorrow for the last part of the story.
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