may 2015 | lewis & clark day 5 / 5

YAY! The final day. Such a great trip - but I think everyone was so excited to be done. Little did we know we were in for (in my opinion) the longest, most miserable day yet. It wasn't the weather, which wasn't bad - lightly raining, cloudy, so no kids were tempted to tip anyone. It wasn't really the lack of pretty scenery - it was super pretty. I think it was the overall feeling of just wanting to be home. All I could think about was how badly I  wanted to take a shower and sleep in my bed, and eat a hamburger. (I ended up getting wings instead, not a bad choice either.)

This day lasted approximately forever. The boat people kept telling us it was around the corner, and then it wouldn't be, and I would get so frustrated...... repeat that about 20 times. Needless to say, it felt like a very long day.

Like some kind of miracle the sun came out RIGHT as we finished and we all pulled into the dock. It seemed like a somewhat anti-climactic finish - a lot of people had their parents picking them up, but Josh and I just loaded our kayak into a friends boat and drove away into the sunset (aka we all slept on the way home).
And that was it. 125 miles in 5 days, done!

May 2015 | lewis & clark day 4 / 5

I thought that day four was the second to hardest day (the last day being, by far, the hardest in my opinion). The morning was sunny, which meant the kids wanted to play and flip people on the kayaks - which is fun and all, but exhausting. So after doing that all morning, we ended up paddling against the wind in the afternoon, and it was brutal. At the end of the day we even had to carry our kayaks over a sandbar - it was pretty difficult. I think all the adults pretty much ended up switching to paddle with kids who were hurt / couldn't / wouldn't paddle - again, totally fine, just exhausting. Josh and I both ended up basically paddling kids in the second half of the day. The lead teacher definitely put an end to that for the last day (thought Josh and I still ended up paddling with different kids - which kinda sucked - it would have been cool to finish together.)

Needless to say I headed straight to the shower (the first in four days!! I may have been the first one in!) right after we landed on the beach, and felt about 100x better after that. The weather was windy, but I was cozy in my tent and I think everyone was just really excited to be (almost) done with such a crazy epic trip!

May 2015 | lewis & clark day 3 / 5

Day three we started out early into some rain. We were under strict instructions to stay together, which is a lot harder then you might think - but every time we got in front of the lead boat we would have a siren megaphoned at us, so we managed.... it's just really hard to stop the tide, that's all I'm saying. We paddled by some old ports with abandoned boats (which I would love to go back to), and then had lunch in Longview - where there was hot coffee and hot chocolate  ♡ ♡ ♡

In the afternoon the sun came out again, and so the flipping started again. There had been some kayak swapping, and Josh ended up with the English teacher, and I was with his Mom. We all went around trying to flip everyone (it's all fun and games till your sit in kayak gets swamped with water). At night we camped on the beach. All the adults needed to help with one meal (the rest of the times we got served by the kids - it's good to be an adult sometimes, I suppose) and that was the night we decided to help out : quesadillas. The kids did such a great job with all the food; it was awesome, and so nice to not have to worry about it. Our principals left that night too, since we had school the next day, so the real fun could begin....totally kidding :) nothing changed when they left.... except that the megaphone left too, which was kind of nice - not gonna lie.

May 2015 | lewis & clark day 2 / 5

After falling asleep at 7:30pm the night before, we were ready to get on the water by 7am. The first thing we went under was the 205 bridge, which is h u g e. The pillars are gigantic. It was early Sunday morning, and there wasn't much traffic - it was really cool to see. Right after that we paddled thru the marinas and houseboats - some of them cheered for us! It was sweet. Can you imagine the sight of all the kayaks and boats going thru? We are like a small armada :)

Later in the afternoon the weather cleared up, which meant the kids were all about tipping over people, all adults included. Best to get it over with early, right?! It was really fun, and since it was sunny not such a huge deal. What was a big deal was getting the water out of our sit in kayak.... nightmare. 

^ SUN!

That night we camped in St. Helens, which was adorable (and definitely on my "must go back to" list.)