"Jell-O Shots for Boobies!"

Little did we know we didn't have to travel to South Padre Island or Daytona Beach to get a "spring break" 2008 experience this weekend. All we had to do was hop in the RV, drive four hours down the road to Noel, Mo., for some great people watching (and listening).

We floated the Elk River on Saturday morning, and camped at the River Ranch Resort all weekend. Let me tell you, the clientele of the River Ranch Resort definitely take the "resort" part to heart.

This place was jam-packed. I love camping, but I don't really like to be camping within six feet of the campsite and people next to us.

It was an interesting mix - families with small children, couples, and ton of late teens-early 20s party people. In fact, within about 10 minutes of pitching our tent, a truckload of MIPs passed by. Of course we don't know how old they REALLY were, but as someone who deals with high school students on a daily basis, I would almost bet my life that they were most definitely under 21.

Adam and I rode down with mom and dad and Jayne in the POW (Palace on Wheels).

That's definitely the way to road trip. Mom drove, Adam and I sat on the couch and read, Dad navigated.

Along the way, Adam made PBJ sandwiches for mom and dad. You definitely don't want the driver of the POW to have low blood sugar and start making poor decisions...

Home sweet home for the weekend:

That's our tent. Thankfully we were smart cookie campers and picked the high spot on the campsite. You'll see why in just a little bit...

We ended up having a very large group. All of my aunts and uncle, and cousins and their kids were in the group, along with some friends of one family. Aunt Janet (a semi-frequent commenter here) did the most of the cooking - awesome breakfasts both mornings, coordinated sandwich fixins for the canoe trip. Somehow, I have a photo of Uncle Mark cooking but not her. I must have been too busy eating while she was cooking!


Malachi, the youngest member of our party, stayed up til after midnight on Friday night while we were sitting around shooting the bull. Then, he only slept for 15 MINUTES! the next day. Surprisingly he wasn't that crabby, at least not that I saw. The kids loved being down at the river's edge playing in the water.


Saturday morning we left for the canoe trip. Our schedule departure time was 10:30, but when we got up to the departure barn and spied the other 1,000 people waiting for the busses, we knew it would be awhile. Meanwhile, Dad, Ann, Carrie and John went across the river to another canoe outfitter. Since RRR was out of canoes, they had to rent from the other place. Their put-in spot was 6 miles up, ours was 8.

We all thought this would be perfect. They'd go up to the six-mile spot, we'd start at 8, and meet up with them as we floated by. Well, they left our campsite the same time we went up to stand in line. We didn't leave the campsite by bus until 11:07, and I'll bet the other group was already at the six-mile put in point by then. They ended up waiting until 12:30, when as Adam and I floated by I heard my dad whistle to get my attention.

They had been asking all of the canoeists what time they put in as they went by, and were getting answers like 8:30, 9:00. They thought it would take us forever to get there. Most of those people must have been the "I'm doing more drinking than paddling" bunch, because it didn't take us that long.

THE SECOND we put our cooler in the canoe and buckled our life jackets, it started POURING rain. Pouring. We shoved off in the rain, squinting through the pounding rain. Poor Adam - this was his first float trip - not the best experience. I've never canoed in the rain, and this weekend, it rained almost the entire 8-mile trip. We were a bunch of freezing, drowned rats when we got back to camp.

Thankfully, we had our share of drunken a-holes on the river to keep us entertained.

You might be wondering why this blog post about a family camping trip is titled "Jell-O shots for..."

Along with random "WOOOOOO!"s screamed every two minutes by the same guy at one point, I actually heard a guy on a raft scream "Jell-O shots for boobies!" At least he was smart enough to raft the river while three sheets to the wind instead of canoe. That's a TINY bit safer, I guess.

I thought the first thing they teach you in canoe school (is there such a thing?) is DON'T STAND UP IN THE CANOE! Obviously these cats hadn't ever been told that. I couldn't believe all the people (usually guys) I saw trying to stand up as they were moving down the river.

Hopefully, some of the photos I took with Shawna's disposable underwater camera will turn out okay and I can post some photos of the canoe trip later. For now, you'll just have to make due with my Mark Twain-like narrative of life on a river.

Usually when we canoe, the river water is cold when you jump out of the canoe, but the water seemed heated compared to the rain that fell as we paddled. Adam and I, Dad and John, and Ann and Carrie made it the whole trip without tumping over, although you probably wouldn't know it by looking at the three inches of water in the bottoms of our boats by the end of the trip.

Of course, if it was raining on us, that had to mean it was raining on our camp, but none of us expected this:

That's Carrie, using a water cannon to pump out the tiny lake left by the rain right in front of their tent. The lake was about 8 feet wide and went from our picnic table right up to their door. Good news is - our tents stayed dry, even though Noah and his ark probably floated by at some point during the afternoon.

We had a little bit of water in the corner of our tent, but it was our own damn fault since we didn't properly stake the rain fly. Lesson learned, there.

Smarty-pants Ann went up and asked the camp store for every piece of spare cardboard she could get her hands on, and we finally got our camp at least inhabitable again.

Meanwhile, in the POW:

The upper class was livin' it up, caring nothing about the "little people" outside! Here, they watch "Shall We Dance" on the TV.

Adam and I went for a walk Friday after we set up our tent.


This bottom photo looks like one of those grainy Bigfoot pictures. I was trying to shoot the beer bongs without being totally obvious about it.

Just think, if all that engineering went into solving the energy crisis, we might not be paying $4 a gallon for gas!

This guy must have shown his boobies A LOT on his float trip. He didn't even make it off the take-out beach before he passed out. The resort staff just left him there. Best to let passed out dogs lie, I guess.


I had a great time, and I really enjoy float trips on that river. It's class I and II, so it's pretty easy to do in a canoe without losing it.

It would have been much nicer to have sunny and hot conditions for the trip, but it is what it is.


I think if we do it again down there, it'd be better to do the canoe trip on Friday. The weekend trip was rush-hour traffic jam of canoes and rafts. That's no fun.

Who wants to go on the next trip?