Alabama Trip, May 2009 - Days 1-4

Despite me stressing about it for weeks, the plane ride to Alabama was fairly tame. Sara was enthralled and entertained by her first airbus experience. Dan ran her around the Dallas airport during our lay-over and she slept from Dallas to Alabama :

Luckily our flight back was equally uneventful.

Upon arriving in Alabama we rented a bike for Dan to ride for the week, bought a play pen for Sara to sleep in, and then we went to Mom's house. Fara and Kevin also came over for a visit that night. We put the over-tired Sara into the shower where she screamed and then we put her to bed for the night in my old room.

The next morning, Dan got up to ride his bike early and then we played with the three dogs and Nanna played with Sara. Then we got ready to leave for the lake house we had rented up at Lake Guntersville (in North East Alabama) for the weekend. We met up with Fara and Kevin that afternoon and stopped to eat at a Mexican restaurant on the way to Lake Guntersville.

Let me explain about Alabama food. It's the best food anywhere. The Mexican food is good, the barbecue is good, the Greek, the Chinese, the Hamburgers, the best! I had a list of restaurants I wanted to get back to and we made it to some of them.

So we arrived at the house in Lake Guntersville and it was a huge million dollar mansion! It is actually for sale and we took a pic of the sale brochure for fun. At the house we also met up with our friends from Wisconsin, Chris and Shannon and their two kids. It was good to have everyone together again. We all had previously met up in Glacier in August 08.



So the first thing we did after exploring the residence and unloading the car was to kick back and lay on the floor.

Then we went in search of food, Barbecue. This was Sara's first taste of lemon and we gave her some baked beans. I had my first sweet tea since leaving the South :

The place was kind of "special". It had dead stuffed animals all over every wall and giant rod iron chandeliers. We had paper towels on the table, as you would imagine, for all the barbecue sauce and they had great hush puppies.

It was raining a lot, even so, when we got back to the lake house we went on a walk down to the lake to hunt for frogs (the women that is : Leslie (Chris's Cousin), Shannon, and Fara, and I. The men mostly stayed in the lake house and talked nerd and drank beer and could not be coaxed out. We saw huge gar under the dock by the lake and found several interesting insects and tree frogs.

The next morning we innocently got up to hike at the Walls of Jericho not knowing what was waiting for us, Alabama MUD! It had been raining rather heavily for a few days on and off so we should have known but still it would have been hard to imagine this.

Here we are in the parking lot, L - R, : Chris, Shannon, Leslie, Fara, Kevin


Sara would have been completely entertained by the rocks in the parking lot.


We saw lots of wildlife :

Newt

Millipede held by Jaz:

Also there was a ring-necked snake that Dan spotted. I caught it and we let everyone hold it. Leslie was particularly excited because she grew up in Alaska and had never seen on in the wild, much less held one. It was moving so fast though, no one got a picture of it.

On the trial there was beautiful Alabama greenery. Also these tree bridges we had to cross were pretty narrow actually. Dan crosses with a sleeping Sara.

Even with the people telling us we'd never make it to the end because the mud was slick as ice, Dan, Leslie, Sara, and I pressed on to the end. There were a couple of really terrifying moments but we made it.

Here is the last pic I got before the really scary trail section began. After this we were holding on to roots, rocks, and anything we could to stay on the trail.


We made it! Dan and Leslie swim at the falls. It was probably lucky the trail was almost impassible or we would not have had this beautiful place to ourselves for a moment :

Sara watches Daddy swim :

Sara gets a snack before it's her turn to check out the water :
Sara's turn! She loved this, collecting rocks in the water and handing them to us :




Then we continued on, climbing above this waterfall pool area to the next one. Here's a pic looking back at that amazing spot from above :


The next part up from that waterfall was like a giant rock amphitheater or cathedral as some people refer to it. It was pretty amazing. We climbed up here without Dan and Sara, so it was just Leslie and I taking a look.



Upon seeing this amazing sight and because we were encouraged to keep going by some guy or we would miss the most amazing waterfall, we kept climbing up the rocks. We were glad we did because there was a really cool waterfall at the end.


Then, led by Leslie, we climbed down the rocks to the bottom of it, and found a red newt on the wall too. What an amazing place :

On the way back we hoofed it up the trail and really felt the humidity kicking in. Even though it was only in the 70's with probably 70 or 80 percent humidity, which is nothing for Alabama.

Random things I forgot to mention:
We also went to Cathedral Caverns, which I highly recommend. Fara has those pics from the cave since I didn't bring my camera. It was Sara's first caving experience and she did great. Even when they turned out all the lights to show us the phosphorous glowing rocks.

Dan and I both rode the amazing bike that Bob's bikes in B'ham rented us. It was about a $5,000 bike, Specialized Allenz ( I think) and it rode like a flying carpet, we both kind of want one now. I went riding one morning in the pouring down rain, I mean pouring. I went about 10 miles along side lake Guntersville and saw several snapping turtles crossing the road, it was a great ride!

Also on the way to the Walls of Jericho we (Fara and Shannon and Kids) rescued many turtles crossing the road, you're welcome turtles.

We were really sad to say goodbye to our friends from Wisconsin, until next time! Hopefully we will have plans in the works for a North Eastern vacation next time to see them.

We said goodbye to the mansion and continued home to hang out with Mom and Fara and Kevin and Birmingham friends.