Tennessee teen paddles home in canoe after flooding

Julia Bryant, 18, returned to her Knoxville home late Saturday after a hike to find her home surrounded by water and unreachable by car after 5 inches of rain hit the area, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

Bryant, a senior at Bearden High School, stayed with a friend Saturday night, decided to use a canoe to navigate her way home Sunday the newspaper reported.

"We were like, 'How are you going to get home?' " Bryant's friend and classmate, Ansley Pacetti, told the News Sentinel. "She said, 'I don't know.' I was like, 'Well, we could just canoe over there?' "

After finding a friend with a canoe, Bryant picked it up, was driven to a spot near her home and then began paddling, the newspaper reported. The teen, who had two bags of groceries in the canoe, paddled the three-quarter-mile trip without any difficulty.

Becca Campbell, who was at Bryant's house watching the family dogs, watched as the teen "canoed her way into the driveway through a bunch of trees," the News Sentinel reported.

"It was a sweet reunion but also really absurd," Campbell told the newspaper. "I didn’t think she would actually do it. I thought it was all a joke, and then it was real. And she made it, but she’s not leaving until all the water’s gone."