A Day at Metcalf Bottoms

Recently we have been doing a lot of traveling. We just finished a two-week trip all over the eastern side of the United States. Most of it was a lot of fun but other times it was just plain tiring. But I’m not going to talk about the hard and tiring parts, just the fun times like when we were with my cousins in Tennessee. We did many fun things. One of the more enjoyable activities was going to a river, which was called Metcalf Bottoms, about an hour away from my cousins’ home.

One of the more enjoyable activities was going to a river, which was called Metcalf Bottoms, about an hour away from my cousins’ home.

When morning came, we got up, ate breakfast, and hit the road. After a short one-hour drive, we arrived at the river. It took a couple of minutes before we found a parking spot, and once we got everything out of the car, we put it on our little picnic table. Then we wanted to see what the river had to offer. We put our feet in and thought, “Wow! That’s cold!” But my cousin Ethan spurred me to jump in, so I counted to three and jumped in! The water there was very shallow, but that definitely didn’t decrease any of the coldness.

For the next five seconds, I stood there in the water gasping for air from the chill of the water. My first thought was, “This water is freezing!” Ethan was trying to get air too, not because of the cold though, but because he was laughing. I thought to myself, “This is like the rivers back home near our village!”

After a couple of minutes, I got used to the water, and we began looking for crawdads (also called crayfish). At first we couldn’t find very many, but after we caught a couple, we suddenly started to see them everywhere. They were quite easy to see because they were orange. We continued to catch them for a good 50 minutes or so until we spotted a copperhead snake. At first it was under a nearby rock, but then it took off to the edge of the water and seemed to disappear until my cousin Reed spotted its head pop out from under the water. Hudson picked up a rock and threw it close to the snake, which scared it off down river.

After that we decided to take a break to do a little tubing down the river. When my uncle Aaron blew up the tubes, it was fun time. We walked up the river a good little bit, laid down on the tubes, and slowly drifted down the river. Some people had made rock walls on either side of the river and in the middle they had made two more walls going parallel to each other; when we went through it, all the water shot through that little space, giving us a little boost. My favorite part was the mini rapids in the river. It was bumpy and would spin you a little bit, making you go faster.

We then decided to go down river a little bit to where there was this really big rock to jump off of into the water. It was about a five-minute walk, and once we arrived Ethan and I excitedly took off our shoes, counted to three, and jumped! This pool of water was much deeper, about 8 to 10 feet to the bottom. It wasn’t as cold this time because my body was already used to the water. But it was still quite cold. Morgan was too chicken to get in—he really dislikes cold water. We stayed there for another hour or so, ate some lunch, and then headed home. That was a day I’ll never forget!