What is a float trip you might ask? I am surprised by the number of people who have no idea. A float trip is just what the name implies. You hop in a canoe, raft or innertube and float down a river. This trip can include some alcoholic beverages, as long as there aren't any glass containers.

This summer, the first Saturday in June, several of my FtB friends will be meeting up in rural Missouri for a float trip and campout.

My question to all of you is, do you want to come? If you do, would you be camping? Would you like to stay in a cabin or sleep in tents? Would you like to float with others in a large raft or would you like a canoe? You can even float in an innertube if you wish.

This is the website of the place I am going to try and set this up at after I get an idea of how many are going and what type of lodging we need. I will probably set up a paypal so you can get me the moolah at some point, since floats have to be pain in advance.

It really is too bad that you can't totally rearrange your plans to suit my schedule. My wife and I would LOVE to come... And we probably could (the week before...)

Have a ball!

Ive done this sorta thing in Ohio back in my younger days. Fun stuff!!

WOOT!!!

I am all over this!

I'd love to come, but I'll have to check out my financials.

As for my preferences, I'd like to stay in a cabin, but probably won't to save money, and I'd like to have a big raft, making it easier to socialize.

On a quiet river you can socialise just fine in tyre tubes, you just paddle into groups and maintain relative closeness quite easily. Big rafts are mostly just sitting - it doesn't seem as floaty, somehow.

Cover up those legs! First time I went tubin', I got second-degree sunburn on my legs. Huge pus-filled blisters for weeks, gross.

I always use spf 60 on floats. You'll burn to a crisp otherwise.

You may be right.



Funny story, last time my family went to Holiday World, I floated on their tube river for about an hour, after having put on sun screen. But apparently my trunks rode up on my legs so I got sunburnt on the inside of my upper thighs. Not pleasant at all.

When I was growing up, my extended family used to spend as much as a month up in Michigan, at Higgins Lake. There's a river there that is absolutely marvelous for this sort of excursion (though a raft would be impractical due to shallows, canoes and kayaks were both quite popular).

The state had a strict rule of 'minimal interference'--meaning that if a canoe could get past a tree, it was left laying where it fell. The result was that if it had been a bad spring for storms, you would have long stretches of calm, placid waters gently drifting... until you rounded the bend and discovered a freakin' slolom run consisting of a dozen fallen trees. The rear guy in the canoe got REALLY good at backpedaling to execute a fast turn, lemme tell ya.

One year, my then-teenaged brother and his best friend rode down the river on kayaks, rather than in the canoes with the rest of the family. Of course, the whole POINT of going by kayak is to roll a few times, just to show you can.

Then they got to the quiet parts of the river, and lazily napped as their craft drifted. Wet. Stripped to their cut-offs. In the summer sun. Those little water droplets make great magnifying glasses. Can you say "sun poisoning"? I knew you could! I swear, it's one of only two occasions when I can remember my brother actually being in tears (the other involved an ingrown toenail, when he was 10-11).

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