Hi all! I'm fine now, but Saturday I had what I think was the scariest 10 mins of my life.
My bf, me, his 2 kids (13 & 15), my friend, her daughter (9) and her niece (17) all went tubing on a river. It was over 2 hours away from where we live and it was a beautiful day. We got the tubes and went to find the river. We had to stop and ask directions because the GPS stopped working because we were not on roads it knew. The place we stopped said they were not renting tubes because the river is treacherous that day.

But we found the campground, we made sandwiches and were watching people going down. The river was high and moving rapidly. However there were people going down on tubes making it look so easy. We watching probably 20+ people go down before we decided to tie our tubes together and brave it! 7 of us, 7 tubes, no problem, right?
ahhhhh no..... 5 mins into it, we hit a small rapid, I was last in line and my tube flipped. The water was going soooo fast that I could not get back above water .... my BFs son got me back up somehow, I lost my $120 sunglasses and my flip flops! (watched them float down river gggrrrr) I was sooooooooo scared!!! I am not a small or weak person and that water swept my feet out and I couldn't get back up because it was pulling me under and your strength goes so quickly, you tire out so fast you don't even realize it. I can't imagine what might have happened if his son was not as strong as he is. So I get back in the tube, but before I could get my legs up we hit trees in the middle of the river, with 7 people tied together 3 went one way and 4 went the other way. We got caught and we were getting poked with branches, scratched to pieces and with the water moving so quickly we could not get untangled too easily. By that point I wanted OFF. I yelled to bf that I was DONE and I think everyone was done, then I saw another rapid ahead that I was going to hit and my mind flashed to how scared I was on the last one. I almost panicked but held it together since we could not get to the bank on time to not hit that one. We hit it, but I held on this time. We finally got to the bank and after a huge struggle and hanging onto rocks, tree branches for dear life (my arms today feel like they are going to fall off) we managed to get everyone off onto the shore.
We got the tubes out too (amazingly) and we had to walk back to the campground (maybe 1/2 a mile) with no shoes on, everyone was bleeding from one place or another. I think BF broke his big toe or he really hurt it, its all bruised black all around it.
Thankfully everyone was ok, just a little worse for wear, tired, sore and scared out of their minds. It was a long quiet 2.5 hour ride home. When we dropped off the tubes my friend told the guy how bad it was out there and he said that there were 5 river rescues in the last 2 days, one girl broke her arm, 2 more were rushed to the hospital, and when we were driving we saw a fire boat rescue truck followed by an ambulance heading up that way and then 2 state troopers going the same way.
I have tubed this river before, it was beautiful... it should have been a perfect day for us and the kids to tube. They are all scared to go back now. I showed them pics online of how the river usually is but with all the rain we've had its just so high and when they release the dam its too fast. I hope they will go back again though, we'll just know now to call ahead to ask how the river is first before we take the 2.5hour drive.