While the weather up in the Ozark Moun­tains was about ten degrees cooler than the Texas heat, it didn’t feel too much cooler. It could have been all the time we spent in it to decide we were still HOT! One of my favorite past times is tub­ing down the Frio River here in Texas, but we have never attempted it with our chil­dren. We decided this day would be as good as any other to make our way down the river on tubes. The scenery was breath­tak­ing and being spring fed, the water the per­fect tem­per­a­ture and clean.
To begin, we had to ride on a van to our drop off spot. The van was HOT and oth­ers were smok­ing, nice! The excite­ment was start­ing to dim. We arrived at the spot and began get­ting sit­u­ated. The cooler in this tube, Kyle, Con­nor and Logan all had their tubes and since we weren’t able to tie every­one yet, they began drift­ing down the river. They were so excited!! They wanted to jump in and out of the tube. Not even 5 min­utes in, Connor’s hat was sink­ing down to the bot­tom of the river and he was brav­ing the waters to swim down to get it. He is not a great swim­mer, not even a good one. His tube got away from him and I pro­ceeded to swim as fast as I could towards him. Thank good­ness some­one there float­ing was a way bet­ter swim­mer than myself and was able to save him – Yes, he left his life jacket in the van. Lana was cry­ing, Rejoice frus­trated, and Luke finally was able to get Lana to sleep! Finally we were off!
I already had the cooler tube tied up to mine, and then tied Con­nor and Logan. About that time we were headed to a fork in the river. Water rapidly going down one side or another of a large pile of trees! I was hur­riedly try­ing to get all four tubes to go down one side or another, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Luke, Lana and Rejoice all drifted by while two tubes went on one side of the tree and the other two went on the other side. I was pushed into a tree. Kyle’s float came straight into me…he started to panic and was get­ting out of his float. I had to calm him down and push him back in his float. I told him to not let go of the han­dle and pushed him as hard as I could and sent him on his way. All the mean­time, the water was rush­ing under­neath us, Con­nor was find­ing spi­ders in the trees and was scream­ing like a lit­tle girl to get away from them. I told the boys, “DO NOT for ANYTHING get out of your tube! I had to pull Con­nor out of the tube and pull his tube around the tree. He is not a light boy, all about 85 pounds and he was scream­ing I don’t want to die made him that much heav­ier. We sur­vived. Kyle kept drift­ing and then sit­ting on the side wait­ing for us, so I then tied him to my float. We decided after all that excite­ment it was time to eat lunch. We found a nice spot on the bank in the shade. There was a large log we could all sit down on and enjoy a turkey sand­wich and a Bays Boys lunch is not per­fectly com­plete with­out Flam­ing Chee­tos. Not sure why they like them so much, but they do! The boys swam for a cou­ple of min­utes and we were off again. Con­nor begged his Aunt Rejoice to allow Lana to sit in his float. They had so much fun…splashing, singing and danc­ing! We were all start­ing to really have fun…until… The skies started clos­ing in around us and before you knew it the rain was com­ing down. Thun­der boomed, kids screamed. We pulled over to another spot hop­ing that the rain would pass us quickly, but the weather didn’t quite change as fast as it does in Texas. We waited it out for about 30 min­utes and gave up. Back in our tubes…now we finally were all tied together. The clouds kept us from get­ting sun­burned, the rain stopped, we ended on a per­fect note! A 3 hour float quickly became a 6 hour one! We had a blast! You all want to go with us next time?