Goodbye Friends

Tomorrow after work my brother and I will be leaving for our Cumberland Island backpacking trip. I am so excited! I just hope I haven't left out anything vital. Usually, I wouldn't sweat anything like that, but there are no stores on the island. It's sort of like being on a deserted island, in a way.

I have been frantically packing my backpack tonight. I thought I had it all together and then I'd remember one more thing. My pack is so heavy! It's all that friggin' water I'll be lugging. Unfortunately, that is something I will need for sure so there's no cutting out pounds or even ounces in that department. I have cut a few "luxuries" out, though.

I have all the trails I want to see mapped out. We will be walking MANY miles before those 3 days are over. It's a true test of the effectiveness of my Hotness Plan, I guess. (Hope I don't fail!) :)

The only thing I am really worried about is running across a snake. Most of you know about that uncontrollable, unreasonable, and psychotic fear of mine. If I could change one thing about myself it would be that paralyzing fear of mine! It's hard to be so outdoorsy with those wretched reptiles around!

Anyway, I can't wait to post some pictures of the trip! It's such a unique and beautiful place. It's also full of history. (Another one of my favorite things!)

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I should be back home Monday night. Until next time... Bye!

My 2005 Spring Break

Spring Break last year was awesome. I was looking through the pics I had taken and thought I would post some and take you all along on the trip with me. Lord only knows how badly I wish I could go back!

The Flight
I had a connecting flight Phoenix to Salt Lake. My flight from Atlanta to Phoenix was nice. The sky was beautiful. I took pics out the window. All was right in the world and I was too excited to be going on this trip. Then my plane landed in Phoenix.

I stepped off the plane and looked at the prompter screen to see which gate I needed to get to since it was not posted on my ticket. There was no gate listed but my matching flight number and the destination (Salt Lake) was up followed by the wonderful words “On Time”. Cool. I went to the restroom. No gate posted. I browsed the stores. No gate posted. When it was about 15 minutes until I figured my plane would begin boarding and still no gate was posted I asked one of the wonderful America West agents about it. My flight had been canceled and I was directed to go to customer service. The agent pointed to a line so long that it rivaled Christmas Eve rush at the mall. I lost it and totally went off on him. Okay, I know that doesn’t sound like the mature way to handle it. It wasn’t his fault. It should be no big deal. I’d just take the next flight out of here, right? Well, you might think. But let me just say the only reason I was flying with AWA was because of the credit I had with them resulting from a disasterous flight that previous December.

And that brings me back to why I was so pissed that this spring break flight seemed to be headed down that road again. Standing in the long customer service line, I called Best Friend to let her know what was going on. I was cursing a long line of profanity and telling her how I was going to own that @#$%^ airline. The guy in front of me chuckled. Oh no he did not just do that! Now sometimes when I get really angry, my southern accent comes out more thickly. That was one of those times and I thought maybe he was making fun of me. I cursed him out. Then when I shut up and he spoke back to me to explain what he was laughing at, he spoke with a familiar southern accent. He was also from Georgia and had missed the same flight. I apologized for cursing him out and he apologized for laughing, explaining to me that he heard this fierce angry voice and turned around to see that it was a little blonde girl spouting out those obscenities. He said he wanted me on his side because he had to be in SLC for business this day and he knew that I would be one of the people who got on the plane because I was such a firecracker. We concocted a story to tell the agent that we were getting married that evening in SLC and so we had to be there. We walked up to the counter together. I slammed my license and ticket down on the counter explaining what happened and that I must be on the next flight to SLC. She didn’t even look at me, just typed away furiously on her keyboard and then said, “Here’s your tickets. You’ll be on the next flight and you have seats together.” Shocked at the simplicity of the procedure, I looked at my ticket. Seat B? Dammit! I had specifically asked for a window seat so I could take pictures of the Grand Canyon from above! I opened my mouth in protest and thought better of it. “Thank you,” I muttered.

We had an hour to kill before we could board the plane so we went to a bar in the airport. I had cursed this poor guy out a short time ago and now he’s buying me drinks. (Sometimes it is cool to be a woman! :) I had a rum and coke to calm my nerves. Then another and another. I was a little tipsy on the way to the plane. It was a little bit fun walking along the moving sidewalks in that state. We boarded the plane and I informed my new friend that I was going to curse out whoever was in the window seat because that was supposed to be my seat! He gave me a worried look. I reassured him I was only joking but he didn’t look so sure. The truth was I couldn’t wait to see who did get my seat.

I found my row and put my bag in the overhead bin and went to sit down. I saw who was in my window seat. It was a totally hot guy. I don’t mean wow, he’s cute. He was hot as in hotter than Orlando Bloom hot. I became nervous like a school girl and couldn’t speak at first. His hotness intimidated me. Then he noticed my camera in my lap and asked me about it. I told him that I had it out to take pictures of the Grand Canyon and explained how he was actually sitting in my seat. Then he showed me that he also had a camera and was planning on doing the same thing. Turns out he was an outdoorsy guy from Wisconsin. We compared notes about the time that we each had visited the Grand Canyon. He told me that I could lean across him to take pictures if I wanted. Yeah, I was going to like this flight. I didn’t get any pictures but I did lean across Hot Guy to “try” to compose a shot. Hot Guy and I talked the entire time, laughing and playing the cheesy trivia on the TV screens. Before all was said and done, Hot Guy and I shared a kiss (I blame the rum for this behavior. haha) and exchanged numbers. He called me once. I called him once. We haven’t spoken since. But his number is still in my cell phone as a reminder of that fun flight.


Columbia River Gorge
Best Friend, our dear friend we call Goofball, and I started on our way to Oregon shortly after my arrival. We stayed in Boise, Idaho that night. I thought it was cool that I was in four state capitals in one day…Atlanta, Ga., Phoenix, Az., Salt Lake City, Ut., and finally Boise, Id. We made it to the Columbia River Gorge the next morning. It was absolutely stunning. The mosses, the ferns, the enormous waterfalls, the thick mist. I was in love. Best Friend and I hiked while Goofball hung close to the car and smoked. She said she could see enough from the car. She was right. Beauty was all around us, but I wanted to see more. I was disappointed that I couln't even see Mt. Hood because it was so shrouded in fog and clouds. But I did see Mt. St. Helens as we were crossing the bridge across the Columbia from Portland, Or. to Vancouver, Wa. I had my zoom lens attached to my camera ready to snap a shot the first chance I got. I looked down at my camera for a moment to check my settings and when I looked back again, St. Helens was covered in a black ashy cloud! It had vented out some ash! I heard people complaining about their cars being covered in the ash the next day at the gas station. No picture, but still something cool to witness.


The most beautiful greenery one can imagine! Just look at the mosses and ferns! Even the trail markers (above) were adorned in this rainforest drapery.








Best Friend and Goofball trying to keep dry!

The famous and beautiful Multnomah Falls. It's much larger than this pic suggests!

One of the many beautiful falls along the Historic Columbia River Highway.

A view of the mighty Columbia from the Washington side of the river.

Jeeping in Moab

Shortly after returning to Utah, Best Friend and I headed south to Moab. We rented a Jeep Rubicon and had a blast! I climbed things in that jeep that I never dreamed possible, drove nose first down impossibly steep rock dropoffs and hung precariously close to cliffs. ME! Just look at me on top of that Jeep like I own it! haha. I had never driven an ORV until that day but it didn't take long to learn to when to put it into 4-low. Best Friend and I had so much fun that day. We drove along the Klondike Bluffs Trail over some very rough and steep terrain. I saw dinosaur tracks along the way! I was so amazed that I stopped to put my hand inside of them. I felt like I was back in Hollywood in front of the Mann's Chinese Theater placing my hands inside of the celebrity's prints to see how I measured up. Let me tell you, I found it much cooler to place my hand inside of the print of a long extinct Allosaurus than Marilyn Monroe's handprint! We did a more challenging trail next called Fins 'n Things. It was so awesome! Talk about steep climbs and descents! Our cooler tumbled from the very back into the front seat a couple of times. Of course, Best Friend and I were the only girls we saw driving and I am proud to announce that I got an applause from a group of men after making a steep descent that they were hesitating on attempting. Not me. I felt unstoppable. After finishing that trail, we moved onto a calmer trail that lead to little-visited arch. That road was so sandy and bumpy! We loved fishtailing the jeep, though. It was fun! Our last trail was a little more risky. Not because of the difficult terrain (though there was some) but because we had to be extremely careful to not get lost. It required great map reading skills and sense of direction as we had to follow a dry river bed to another wash until we finally arrived beside this gorgeous canyon. To get to the canyon, we had to walk through this tunnel in the rock called the Dallenbaugh Tunnel. We found crystal quartz in there and I took a few small pieces as a souvenir.

Jeeping was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I definitely want to do it again. But it does leave me wondering...does this make me a redneck?????? :(

Can't wait to see how Spring Break 2006 will turn out!

Just a few shots of our trails. These pics are small hills compared to some we climbed! :) If you click on the last pic, you can get some perspective of the terrain. This was taken through the windshield (note the mud spatter to the left). The darker part of the slickrock is the trail. Look to the right to see the tiny dude on the dirt bike. Now that gives some perspective!

Thanks for coming along on my trip!

The Countdown Begins

I have been a slug on this uneventful weekend. I was supposed to go on a hike with some friends on Saturday until one by one they backed out on me. (YOU PUNKS! :) I was going to go by myself (as usual), but then I woke up with a terrible stomach ache and nausea. Guess if they didn’t back out on me, I would have been the backer-outer. (And I KNOW if that had happened, they would have called ME a punk!)

I am wondering if maybe the food I ate Friday night might have been what made me sick. I guess it is punishment for eating food that is not on my Hotness Plan. Haha. Whatever. I went back to Atlanta to go out with Best Friend and some of the other girls I met from her training. We had a good time, had a few drinks, ate at the restaurant that made me sick and had a crack-head for a waitress. I am not kidding! She was indeed a true crack-head. She was soooo high! It was quite painful watching her count out money. I guess we should have taken it as an omen when the hostess, when finding out who our server would be, told us the name of the manager in case we needed him. Nice.

I also went back to Atlanta on Saturday night to see Best Friend, even though I still felt quite sickly. This is her last weekend here before she goes back to Salt Lake. She graduated flight attendant school on Friday. (Yay! Congrats Best Friend!) I’m so excited that she picked me as her Flight Companion (and even though that sounds really gay, it’s NOT) so that I get the benefits of flying for about 3 cents a mile anywhere the airline flies, even international. It’ll cost me $15 to fly to Salt Lake as opposed to the approximately $400 I am used to paying. I’m writing out my list of places to go right now! Thank you, Best Friend, thank you!!!

So it’s the final countdown for spring break. Five more days! I will be going to meet my brother in a bit for a trip to REI so we can decide what food we want to take to Cumberland Island. I would also like to purchase a more detailed map of the island’s trails than the one I have. I need to start packing up my backpack and weighing it out. Even though the island trails are mostly flat, they are quite sandy and carrying a too-heavy pack around for about 30 miles or so isn’t recommended. I am praying that the weather warms up before this weekend. It has been colder these last few days here than it was any day in January. Crazy! So as long as it warms up, it should be a great backpacking trip roaming around with wild horses. The rest of the break isn’t carved in stone. All I know is that I want to drive far away from here to somewhere pretty. Can’t wait to see where I end up.

It’ll be hard to top last year’s spring break, though. I flew to Salt Lake to see Best Friend. We managed to drive up to and hike in the Columbia River Gorge on both the Oregon and Washington sides. Then later that week we went to Moab, Utah and rented a Jeep Rubicon and did some jeeping along the slickrock. It was awesome! Maybe I’ll post some pics. from that trip next time.

Until next time…it’s five days and counting!

Heads: They win; Tails: You lose.

Isn’t it crazy how life itself can be so contradictory and ironic? It’s not at all difficult to understand where the saying “You can’t win for losing” came from.

I was listening to a couple of my friends at work venting about things. It was the whole “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” scenario. That started turning the wheels in my head. It’s really true…sometimes you truly are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You just have to make the decision of which damnation is worse and go from there.

The more I listened to these friends talk, the more I realized that we have no choice about taking risks in our life. Sometimes the risks pay off and sometimes they don’t. The fear of them not working out sometimes leave us so worried that we aren’t even enjoying life and the whole point of taking the risk is to make a better life. Right?

On more than one occasion, someone has asked me why I do all the “crazy” things I do and why can’t I just be content doing nothing. My answer? I don’t necessarily believe in reincarnation and if I’m only here for a short while, I want to experience as much of this life as I can. I don’t care if anyone thinks I am crazy. I am full of life and I want to live it. Still, I am not one to tempt fate by doing something foolishly dangerous. I don’t have a death wish after all. But if something should happen to me while I am enjoying my life, I won’t have any regrets. Some people are so concerned with what other people think of them that they never really find out who they are. That’s just not me. I know and like who I am. And whatever anyone says about me when I’m dead and gone is fine with me. I am reminded of a verse from a Jimmy Buffett song that says, “I’d rather die while I’m living than live when I’m dead.” And that pretty much sums up my thoughts. I would rather die tonight having experienced the things that I have than to take them all back and live until I am 100 and live in people’s memories as the old woman who had a million dreams and great ideas but never did a thing with them.

Jimmy Buffett must be a better writer than me! It took him one line to make a statement. It took me many lines to make my point! Hahaha! :0)

In that we wish to remain secret, it is foolish to confide
Yet some secrets are self destructive if undeclared inside

Often those in whom we trust dim the faith we hold in ourselves
Yet without faith in our own capacity, we trust not in anyone else

The attempts we make in hopes of gain too often leave us striving
Yet without any of these endeavors our lives will never become thriving

The guarded heart is secure, but remains empty and unfilled
Yet taking the chance to love, may inflict wounds that can’t be healed

We suppress painful memories which we loathe to recall
Yet without remembering, we forget how to avoid that fall

Our peace can be destroyed; replaced with worry and fear
Yet not knowing anxiety, we take for granted serenity so dear

We wish for better times; dreaming ahead for what we lack
Yet all the while, precious time ticks by that we will never gain back

We wish to discover and we question and we implore
Yet often the answers we seek to find are best left unexplored

We live this thing called life in a contrary state
We live on the reliance of a quirk of fate

We live afraid of living life; still we live to evade our deaths we dread
Yet not seeing that our fears to live have already pronounced us dead

Creepy Pics

So here are the creepy pictures I have been promising to post. (finally) The ones taken in the vacated Brooks Run Sanitarium do not reveal anything "ghostly" that I can see, but it was so creepy and scary in there that I had to post a couple just so one can get a feel for the atmosphere. Keep in mind that while it doesn't look that dark in the pics, it only seems that way because I used my flash (which I usually don't use when trying to "catch" something paranormal. Don't want the flash to cause any reflections or shadows that might be interpreted as a fake ghost! haha.) When cameras were still, the only light we had was from three flashlights and whatever moonlight happened to stream through the broken windows. Yikes...can't believe I was in there.



The sanitarium's morgue. Ewwww.








What appears to be a dentist chair...Or was it a tool used in some cruel experiments? bwahahahaa!












One of the many dark hallways in the place.









Same hallway moments later. White orb-like shapes showed up in this pic. It could very possibly be just dust particles. It was quite dirty in there.









This pic. is defintely something I cannot explain. This one was taken in the upstairs (which is off limits to the public, btw...shhh!...Don't report me!) in the Moon River Pub in Savannah, Ga. Best Friend and I sneaked up there when no one was looking because we had been told it was extremely haunted. We peeked into some rooms and snapped some shots. All of the sudden, Best Friend shrieked. "What is it?" I asked. She told me to look at the top of the stairs. I did and saw nothing. "There's nothing there," I said. She insisted there was and I looked again. Nothing. Then I happened to notice she was looking at the top of the stairs through her digital camera screen. I looked through it also and saw this purple misty shape floating around at the top of the stairs. My heart stopped. I looked at the top of the stairs with my naked eyes again and again I saw nothing. But when I looked into the screen I could see it. "Is your shutter frozen?" I asked her and then yelled for her to, "Take a picture! Take a picture!" It took a few seconds to get the shutter to work. Then we ran like hell back down the stairs and looked at the picture she just snapped. This picture is the result. It's a bit blurry because we went by the no-flash rule. It's pretty much what I saw through the screen, only a bit brighter. (Most likely due to the longer exposure the shot required without using the flash.) I have zoomed in on it and it just looks like a huge misty purple blob. I just don't know what it is! A part of me wants to go back and check it out again. Who wants to come along? :)

Rain

It's been a rainy two days. We all become aggravated with rainy weather putting a damper on our moods and crashing our plans. One too many camping trips have been washed out or one too many hikes cut short. Picnics in the park have been washed out. Sometimes it is a fight just to keep awake and alert on a rainy day. And last, but definitely not least, it seems people forget how to drive when it rains. Idiots.

But sometimes I enjoy the rain. I like it because it quiets down all the commotion of the world. It calms me sometimes when I have let myself become overstressed. One of my favorite things to do is grab a good read and hop into bed and listen to the rain as it lulls me to sleep. And sometimes I like it when it rains on one of my bad days, sad days, or plain blah days. I feel like the world is sympathizing with my feelings and weeping right along with me.

Today is one of those days. I don't mind the rain today. I'm not sad, upset, and nothing terrible happened today. I just feel blah. Maybe I'm feeling that way because it is raining, but I prefer to think that it is raining because I am feeling blah. :)

I wrote this for just such an occasion...

Rain

From above spills the rain
It tenderly taps my window pane
Some wish it away, but it's all in vain

It looks like the rain is here to stay
It lingers around for another day
To wash the world's transgressions away

I welcome the rain, the teardrops of the sky
Releasing for me what I am feeling inside
And I listen along to its subtle, faint cry

The rain feels so lonely; not a soul to be seen
Only empty sidewalks glistening in watery sheen
Rendering the world silent until sun casts its gleam

But I find it beautiful, if not a touch gray
The rain granting me a serene and peaceful day
Though the world is sleepy, I rather like it this way

The sleepy day turns to a nighttime sky
The rhythmic dripping refusing to die
And the rain sings me to sleep like a gentle lullaby

Atlanta Botanical Gardens

Best Friend had a short day in training today so I picked her up from her hotel and we went to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Rain has been threatening to fall all day today so it didn't seem like a great day for outdoors in the mountains.

I have been to the gardens before and it is a really beautiful place worth multiple visits. It's the perfect place to practice close-up photography or just photography in general. I realize that I have mentioned photography many times in my blogs, yet the only pictures that I have posted have been my "snap shot" photos to go along with stories. So I decided that I would post some of my more creative photos from the gardens...



I took this close-up because I thought the colors were so beautiful.






Love the misty Fuqua Orchid Center.








A cactus from the Desert Room of the Fuqua Conservatory.












Tulips are my absolute favorite flower!










Another shot of my tulips.







This little guy came out of the pond to meet me then he followed me along the walkway.








I made Best Friend pose for the camera.









Here's ME! I don't know why I am posting this one. I guess I am just trying to prove to everyone that I was there, too! :)