PIKE COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - She was just 12-years-old when she wrote it.

"As a kid, when you're that young. You have such an imagination," says Carmelita Haynes.

Haynes wrote a message in 1987, tucked it into a bottle, and sent it down the creek behind her home in Mccarr.

Haynes watched as the bottle drifted away with her letter inside. She hoped that someone would find it, but never believed she'd get a response, "We usually just jotted down, like if you find this letter please respond. I never dreamed of it."

Twenty-five years have passed and Haynes forgot about that letter until someone answered.

Brian Dingus was with his grandson in Franklin Furnace, Ohio helping to clean the riverbank, "I thought he was teasing me. I turned around and saw that he was unrolling paper out of the bottle. And then he started reading it."

The note traveled more than 120 miles, into the Tug Fork River, then the Big Sandy, and finally into the Ohio River. Despite it's journey, the letter is still in tact.

"The big thing for us was the date that it had been over 25 years," says Dingus.

Thanks to Facebook, Dingus was able to find the person who wrote it.

"It said if you are Carmelita Haynes from Mccarr, Kentucky Peter Fork, I have a message in a bottle from 1987," Dingus says.

The old note helped create a new friendship for Haynes and Dingus. They plan to keep in touch with each other through Facebook.