Murray River Day 3 - back in Bendigo, Victoria

Last night sucked. When you're outdoors and on these trips you usually go to bed early, like at 8 or 9 o'clock. When the sun goes down at 6 there's really nothing to do, and if you actually did something that day, then you're pretty tired anyway. We all went to bed at probably 9 o'clock and were in high spirits, as the weather was still - all cuddled together under this tarp being held down by a tree and a few canoes. No matter how many times you sleep on the ground it never gets comfortable, and sleeping can be difficult. I don't know how long I was asleep, maybe an hour or two went by, and then we all woke up to this super strong wind blowing through our tent. I felt we were somewhat safe because there was a canoe at our heads blocking most of the wind. Sure enough, the canoe paddles buckled and the wind blew a canoe over making our tarp fall down on us. I was all in favor for fixing it because I assumed that if the wind was here, the rain would soon follow and I really didn't feel like a collapsed tarp would do too much. No one else wanted to fix it, and being half blind due to the contacts being out I couldn't do it by myself. After maybe an hour of sleep, maybe 10 minutes, who knows, the rain came. I was one of the lucky ones (sarcasm) on the outside and a part of my body wasn't being covered by the collapsed tarp. Soon enough the water was soaking my left side. I moved as far over to the right as possible, poor Jessica probably felt a little uncomfortable. Once the rain started I couldn't fall asleep, couldn't find a comfortable sleeping position, probably one of the most uncomfortable positions ever. Finally the sunlight came in, with my sleeping bag soaked as well as all of my body. It was still raining outside when we got up and moving. Thank goodness it was the last day so it didn't matter if our sleeping bags were wet. If things couldn't get much worse our leader decided to go crazy on us, calling us out on these rules that he never enforced the previous two days. This brought the already deteriorating group morale down further. Not good.

Simply put, I could've done without this trip. Being told 16 hours before the trip leaves that you're on it is stressful enough. I was in a good small group that had the potential to learn a lot. I thought I was going to learn more about maps and navigation, but didn't. I learned a few different paddle strokes, but my leader wouldn't really enforce or tell us to use them, so I would soon forget them and just paddle in silence. With last night's uncomfortable weather and my leader's poor attitude, I wanted to be home so desperately.And now I'll spend half a day cleaning up my gear, washing dishes, and trying to concentrate on that paper that was due last Friday. Poopy.