OCOEE, Tenn. (WDEF) — Cherokee Rafting started in 1978. It’s a family friendly whitewater rafting company based in Polk County, Tennessee. The business prides itself in taking you down a very important part of local history. The Ocoee River is located inside the Cherokee National Forest. It’s a place where the rapids are guaranteed. We learn more about the adventure as we take you to Destination Ocoee.
“Cherokee Rafting started in 1978 because of the flu on the Ocoee River broke, and so everybody started rafting. And then the 1996 Olympics came to the Ocoee, and everybody just. It just opened up the floodgates for rafting. So the Ocoee is unique because we have dam control water. So you have consistent flow, you have consistent rapids. It just creates the consistent fun, this is why it’s the most popular river in the southeast,” said Justin Shigley, the owner of Cherokee Rafting.
“So at Cherokee, we offer a really good safety program. We train our guides, they through extensive training. They’ve learned the river. They’ve rafted it before they’re turned out,” said Shigley.
“Every day is a new adventure. We, You know, it’s always, you’re always learning something new. How to overcome each challenge. But the most important thing is you just have fun. We love doing it,” said Everett Paulson, a Cherokee Rafting Guide.
“We offer a regular middle trip, which is the most popular on the Ocoee. It’s three hours, five miles of whitewater. We offer a ten mile, which is a full river, which does the 1996 Olympic section, which is a great course to run. And then they also can get a catered lunch halfway down, and then they get the raft the middle on the way back. And then we also offer a private trip high adventure trip. It’s customized what people want. It’s two people, at a minimum, four people in a maximum in a guide, in one raft. And it’s a different raft than we run on our regular trips. Its become a very popular trip because people get to experience the river like they’ve never been able to because they have the time. It’s not. It’s just it’s what you want to do on the river. We get a ton of bachelor parties, we get a ton of bachelorette parties, we get a ton of weddings, where they bring all their groups, we get camp groups, we get church groups. We get, just groups and family. We’ve been doing a lot of team bonding trips with companies where companies will bring people out and just refresh them from being burned out. We just had a proposal on the river this weekend. We have a variety of everything that happens on the Ocoee. You never know what you’re going to see. If people are looking to do this, give us a call. Will plan it, get it all set up for them, put a package together for them, and they can do something cool that they can’t do anywhere else. So we open in April. We’re weekends only until the holiday. Memorial weekend. And we go five days a week. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The river is closed. They actually closed the dam, which doesn’t allow any water to come down the river. So we can’t raft. On Tuesday, Wednesdays everything runs until Labor Day and then we go back to weekends only. We offer the trips. You can book online, you can visit the website, you can give us a call at (423) 338-5124, or you can visit the website at Cherokee rafting.com,” said Shigley.
