To read part nine of day seven, click here.

“Yep, you grabbed your gunwales.”

I didn’t reply. Why would I want to hear some more about how I flipped?

We headed out from the eddy once everyone had made it through the rapids. The next rapids was really easy, and it didn’t take long. It was so easy it wasn’t even scaring me. LOL

We went around an island and a bridge came into sight. We went through a small rocky area before stopping under a bridge. I thought we were just stopping to get instructions about our next rapids. But that little rocky spot we had just gone through was apparently our last rapids of the day.

I was thrilled to be done. I didn’t have to worry about the river anymore!

In order to get to the van, we had to carry the canoes up a steep hill. And then we had to carry them all the way across the entire canoeing place. It was a long walk, with our without canoes! Add the heavy canoes into that, and nobody wanted to do it. But we had to if we wanted to get to our campsite, and I know I wanted to get home!

I mean, I wanted to get to wherever home was that night. (It actually turned out to be a pretty nice campsite…)

We saw our crewmate who had stayed behind coming towards us with Katie.

“_____, you missed out on a really fun day!”
“You should have been with us today, _____.”
“It was weird not having everyone with us, _____!”

When the “reunion” was over, it was time to bring the canoes to the van. An hour later, the canoes were all there and up on the trailer. It was time to clean all of our water gear. We had to gather everything:

• The mesh bags that held our water bottles
• The knee straps
• The dry bags
• The lifejackets
• The water booties
• The helmets
• The windbreakers

When we were done gathering everything and putting it in the appropriate piles, it was time to clean it. We took the totes that Patrick gave us and filled them up with water. Patrick added a bottle of soap to one of the buckets, a bottle of some antiseptic stuff (I think that’s what it was…) to another, and left the other two buckets alone.

That was when we started the assembly line. Glenn spread out two clean tarps and told us not to step on them. We started dunking and swishing things in the totes, doing our best to clean them with the things we had. There were sponges in the scrubbing buckets, so you scrubbed everything down first. Then you moved them into the soapy bucket, where you swished them around. After that you rinsed them in the water tote, before dropping them in the antiseptic.

The dirty piles grew smaller and smaller, and the piles of clean stuff on the tarps grew larger and larger. After about twenty minutes of cleaning, we were done. We all felt disgusting, but everything else was clean!

Click here to read the next part of Day Seven.

*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.*