To read part sixteen of day seven, click here.

I heard footsteps behind us, and it wasn’t long before Jordan caught up to us.

“I want to get my hair wet too! I feel nasty.”

We reached the edge of the creek and I could feel the fear almost immediately. It took me a minute, but I was able to talk myself out of it before it was my turn to dip my head.

When you think “creek”, you don’t think huge rocks, lots of little waterfalls, and water rushing through, around and over rocks as big as a toddler. That’s what this was. It wasn’t a river though – my past two days on the river had taught me that much.

There was a spot right next to the edge of the water where there was a waterfall. We took turns dunking our heads in the waterfall, gasping when the water hit our scalps. It was freezing! I ran my fingers through my hair, brushing it out.

I backed away from the waterfall, letting Jordan have her turn. I didn’t stand up until I had wrung out my hair, trying to get as much water out of it as I could. It was already chilly out, and the water was freezing. I had taken my shirt off so that it wouldn’t get wet, and I didn’t want to have water dripping all over my bare back.

Jordan had brought her comb down, so I asked her if I could borrow it and combed my hair out. When my hair was combed out, I wrung it out again. I stood up, holding my (still dripping) hair away from my back while I put it in a ponytail.

Once Jen and Jordan were done rinsing their hair out, I took my headlamp from the rock I had set it up on. I held it in my hand, deciding not to put it on my freezing cold head. Jen and Jordan grabbed their headlamps too and we headed back up to our tarp,

I said goodnight to Jen and sat down on my sleeping bag, pulling my boots off. I took everything out of my pockets and set it all in my boots, which I put by my head like I normally did. I turned my headlamp off and snuggled down into my sleeping bag, ready to sleep. We were going to be doing our last Service the next day, and I wanted to be ready.

The other girls were talking, and their lights were still on, which made it difficult to fall asleep. As I was waiting for them, I thought about the good things, and the bad things that had happened that day.

That dream had been interesting, and I wondered if I was going to dream the next part of it that night. I made a face as I remembered the grape nuts from breakfast, and I prayed we wouldn’t have to have those again. The crew journal had the food plan – I’d check in the morning.

The fact that I was so scared of the river was not cool. I was still embarrassed of the way I let my fear control me. But that was behind me, and I wasn’t going to think about it anymore.

It was really cool that I was going to be able to send the family pictures of me while I was still on my trip. And the lunch was pretty yummy. But flipping was not cool, at all.

Everyone else hadn’t liked cleaning the gear, but other than the way I felt disgusting afterwards, I didn’t mind it. And rinsing my hair out in the creek had totally made up for it!

Dinner had been pretty good, but the fact that I ate all of it was even better. There’s nothing that came even close to beating the fact that I had washed my hair though. That was the best part of the entire day. LOL

Well, I was done thinking about what had happened that day. The girls were still talking though! I prayed that they would shut up soon and rolled onto my side so I was facing out of the tarp. I looked around for the boys tarp, and felt really lonely when I realized it wasn’t there.

I shouldn’t have felt lonely, but I did. I don’t know why I did – I had five other girls at my back, talking and laughing as they got ready for bed. But looking out of the tarp and not being able to see and hear the guys as they got ready for bed too was weird. Even though it was a nice campsite I couldn’t wait to get out of there and move to a new campsite where we would all be together. I couldn’t see Jen and Katie’s tarp from where I was, and I didn’t even know where the guys were.

It took me a little bit of time to stop freaking out because we weren’t all together. By the time I had stopped worrying about that, the girls were mostly done talking, so I said good night and fell asleep. It was still relatively early, but I was tired!

And it was really good that I got some extra sleep – we were going to have a busy day the next day!

Click here to read the first part of Day Eight.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here. Thanks too NCOBS for letting me use their photos.*