OK, its positive but you gotta stay with me on this ... I came up with an idea for a deaf event open to adults but not entirely just for deaf and adults. It is deaf oriented but can involve deaf families. My goal was to have a camping/canoeing type event. It is a lofty goal, as we would need a river guide, and folks willing to make the event successful. Anyways ... here in my State, we have a river that is 163 miles long called the Etowah. There are two organizations that are trying to make the entire length of the river accessible to canoes and kayaks. One is called The Etowah River Trail, and the other is called The Coosa River Basin Initiative. Their goal is to have campsites along the river for those who want to canoe by day and have a place to set up camp overnight. There are some campsites .. but the goal is not complete, I have to locate them, not only locate campsites, but find a good route that is fun and safe.
So, I decided I would need to scout the Etowah myself first, section by section, to see what the most scenic section would be, and the safest section - just to plan maybe a first event for a group of friends before there was a formal invite open to Deaf from all over ...
I completed the first section last week .. 16 miles from put in to take out. It took 9 hours
there was one part that was extremely unsafe ...
The positive aspect of this, is one section is down minus 16 miles .. I have 148 miles left to go ...
And I thought I was seeing things ... I saw some huge striper bass jumping out of the river that were nearly as big as me. (seriously, do a google image search of the bass caught in the Etowah River)