2025 Big Truck across the Southeast, day 12 + wrapup

Day 12 - rafting day! Even though it was raining and misty, we were pumped about what was about to happen.

We elected to go with the New & Gauley River Adventures outfitter, doing the Upper New half day trip. We figured this was a good way to introduce Jordan to rafting & hopefully set the table for a more aggressive trip in the future. As we were getting ready, we snapped a pic of the boat barn and the sweet fleet of retired school busses which we would later learn may have had all suspension components removed.

Since we weren't bringing phones along, we grabbed a final pre-trip selfie to document the moment. After wearing a hat for 11 straight days (and roughly 50 years prior to that), the salad was looking pretty good.

We didn't opt for the $100 photo at the end, so you can just imagine that this is what we looked like. We had 9 in our boat, including 3 younger kids that had a great time.

The trip was awesome, Jordan had a great time, and our guide Lindsey was the best. She splits time between here and South America, guiding on the Futaleufu River in Chile. Cannot recommend her enough, she kept it fun, had everyone engaged, and hit the rapids perfectly just as she described in her preview.

Here's where things took a bit of a turn. Without getting too far behind the scenes, we were starting to miss our dog Cru back home, and the rafting trip finished up a bit earlier than we expected. We had a quick executive discussion, and decided to forego our final night at the campground and just send it straight home. Whenever you have the chance to get up at 6am, paddle in a whitewater river for 3ish hours, and then drive a motorhome towing a Jeep 10+ hours through the mountains and infinite construction, you take it. We made a quick pitstop at Lindsey's coffee shop recommendation in Fayetteville, a place called Range Finder. Not a big coffee guy, but given our recent decision, it was time to power up.

We packed up, still soaked from the river, hooked up the Jeep, and set out for home. The very first 10 miles that the GPS selected for us really set the tone. This road is not meant for a rig like ours, but that's pretty much all we saw on it. We might as well have taken the Tail of the Dragon to get out of here.

From there, mountains.

After that, things sort of blurred together. We ended up rolling in right around midnight, parked the rig in the middle of the driveway and left unpacking for the morning. As always, quick recap of the trip.

We ended up covering 2,146 miles in the motorhome, and another 482 miles in the Jeep. Spent countless hours in both ocean and river waves, visited 2 national parks, a state park, a state recreation area, a zoo, an aquarium, plenty of local breweries, and made a ton of lasting memories. Huge thanks to Jacqueline from Rover.com for taking great care of Cru while we were gone.

With Jordan about to enter her senior year of high school, we're not sure how many more of these trips we'll have as a family. This one was amazing, and a good reminder how fortunate I am to have a family that travels as well as we do. It's always hard to try to find an image to encapsulate the trip, but this one is about as good a summary as I could find.