Tubing down the Ichetucknee River

Last Thursday Josh and I went with Harvest’s youth group tubing down the Ichetucknee River. It was a great day to go. It was sunny but not so hot I couldn’t enjoy myself. Eleven students went and Josh, Bryan, Kyra, and I were the sponsors. We went down the 1.5 hour route, had lunch, and then went down it again.

Kyra, Taylor (one of the high school girls) and I stayed together. Most of the time, we held on to each other and the tube and lazily enjoyed the cool water and warm sunshine. There were a few times where we were attacked by boys trying to flip us, well Kyra and Taylor and I got pulled apart and pushed aside. A couple of times we were able to out swim them.

Bryan’s goal the first half of the trip was to get as many tubes as possible. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring my camera down the river so I don’t have the pictures to show you. Bryan obtained at least 8 tubes at one point. The second part of the trip Jesse and Noah, with the encouragement from some of the other boys thought they should go down the river while they were both inside the tubes together. They got this idea after lunch when they were trying to do basically the same thing. I do have pictures of this. We were all cracking up laughing. The funniest part was once they had 2-3 tubes on them they couldn’t really get themselves out so they were stuck and could be pushed over and rolled anywhere.

We all had a really great time! Josh and I really love hanging out with all the kids. We are very blessed to have such a diverse and awesome youth group at Harvest. It is interesting to see how diverse our youth group is when we go on trips like CIY and see how many groups have a very consistent look to them. Bryan does a fantastic job of reaching out to kids who are so different but I think really benefit from the group. Like Kyra said a few weeks ago during church when she was talking about our youth group, “The kids are just awesome!”

Here are a few pictures I took before and between tubing.

The whole gang



Lunch Time





The boys version of horseshoes


This is how Jesse and Noah went down much of the second half of the trip.



They tried 3 guys but weren't too successful.