Nicole you are definitely a trooper.....this thread idea is now almost a full year old.....just a few more weeks....unbelievable......
I figured I owed an attempt.....
this has alot done to it...its two layers one darker than the other and then light added by erasing some of the darker areas to highlight what I want and then i selected the river itself and brightened that up some and then selected the sky and lightened it up and upped contrast so it didnt look soo flat......
Then did some blurring techniques to give it a soft feel then ran noise ninja.....