Cultural Experiences and New Activities

I haven't been posting lately about our adventures, but we have had quite a few over the past few weeks. Oh, and I've got a fun new hobby I've been practicing. It's called poi. You can google it for the exact definition, but it's basically fire spinning (except we're just practicing right now to get the muscle memory so we don't kill ourselves when we switch to fire) that came from the Maori tribes in New Zealand. I've seen it performed both in Hawaii and also at numerous concerts (both with fire and with LED glow balls.) I am having so much fun with it and have been practicing every single day.

This was my first day and I'm trying really hard not to whack myself!
Amber is much more advanced than I am, and has become my teacher as far as adding new moves and tricks to my repetoire.
Some friends from work and I planned a trip to the Ocoee river in Tennessee to go whitewater rafting. Talk about exhilarating! It was a little scary, but I am so glad we challenged ourselves to try something like this! Our guide, Franklin, was hilarious, and very experienced on the river. I felt him grab the back of my lifejacket to keep me from flying out of the boat a couple of times :)
This picture cracks me up. This is Dirk "riding the bull" on the front of the boat. Hahaha. The week leading up to the trip Dirk had been complaining about his chest hurting. He went on the trip anyway, and two days later we found he had a cracked rib. He apparently cracked it during a soccer game, poor guy. So no more whitewater rafting or soccer for the next 6-8 weeks :(
Yesterday we went to my first SEC football game, to see the National Champion Crimson Tide take on San Jose State. Some friends from Birmingham met us there, and we spent the afternoon walking around and taking in the crazy Roll Tide fans.
Here we are in front of Bryant Denny Stadium, where the fans were waiting for the team to arrive. Craziness!
It's been ages since I've been to a college football game, probably since I visited Brooke while she was at U of I. At the time I was so much more interested in getting wasted off two wine coolers, so this experience was really special. The amount of energy in the crowd, from kids age 2 to elderly women wearing elephants on their heads. It was contagious, but also a little overwhelming. I had a great time, for sure!
The game was a blowout, and no wonder. Seriously, can you imagine taking on the National Champions on their home turf with hundreds of thousands of fans?! I expressed the same thought to Dirk during the game and he replied, "That's why they had to pay the team a million dollars to come here." Ha!
Walking through campus to our car after the game made me so nostalgic for college. I just remember walking home from a friend's dorm, or from the library, at nighttime, and that smell of academia just brought back so many wonderful memories. I am so fortunate that I not once took my college experience for granted. Every day I stood on campus and took in the wonder and the beauty and the confusion that was college. I'll be traveling to Sewanee with friends in a couple of weeks and I can't wait to be surrounded by all those memories, yet again.

Exploring Alabama the Beautiful

For four years I was spoiled. I was able to travel on someone else's dime once a month, and my right brain got lazy. I got so used to finding my photographic creativity in new landscapes, faces, and foods, that when my traveling days ended, I lost motivation to take and share photographs. And not just of my dogs (who are super cute, granted, but how many dog photos can a girl take?!) So on New Year's this year, I made a list of places in Alabama I would like to visit. Slowly but surely I have been ticking places off of that list. I figured that if I can't be a tourist in someone else's state, why not pretend to be one in my own? I thus tricked my right brain into photography mode.

Old Bryce Hospital was the first place on the list. (check!)

Next were some of the many covered bridges in Alabama. A section of the Warrior River has three bridges, and having never seen a covered bridge before, I was anxious to check it out. My friend Amy came along, she's a native Alabamian, and a fellow adventurer, who was eager to find some fun and interesting places she hasn't seen before.

The Horton Mill Bridge was the first on the list. At 70 feet above the river, it is one of the tallest bridges in Alabama.
I love this photo I got of Amy!
Then we visited Easley Bridge which was very puny and I only got one photograph of it because it was really nothing special.

Then we headed to Swann Bridge, which is the longest covered bridge in the state, and supposedly haunted.
Here we are on the bridge.
Pretty spectacular.
Dirk had ONE weekend off this month so I kidnapped him and planned a getaway to some more of my must-see spots. We set up camp at Lake Guntersville State Park, right smack dab on the lake. I was really really hoping to see a bald eagle (Lake Guntersville is famous for it's bald eagles), but alas, I did not. I have two life goals, one is to never smoke a cigarette, and the other is to see a bald eagle in the wild.
We got everything set up in time for the golden girls to take a dip at sunset. Dirk and I had so much fun. I love camping with him. We just drink and ask silly questions (if you were stranded on a desert island-type questions) and play silly games (word rhyming, etc.) together.
We got up early (which was not difficult when you're sleeping in a tent with two alarm clocks), and headed to the Walls of Jericho. Granddaddy was the first person to tell me about this place, which is considered the Grand Canyon of the Southeast and was discovered by Daniel Boone (this place was his old hunting ground.) The hike is not easy (I won't lie.)
It's approximately 2 miles to the first footbridge, and at this point we were thinking we were almost there. We were wrong. I kept saying, "It's got to be right around the corner. It's got to be right around the corner." I was wrong.
Another half a mile brought us to an open wildflower meadow with this grave in the middle. The headstone was dated 1861 (I believe). Yet again we were thinking that we were almost there. And again, we were wrong.
It was another mile on a rocky trail along the side of a cliff with a drop off on one side before we reached the main attraction. And it was worth it.
The water just gushes out the side of the mountain and forms a huge bowl-like crater inbetween the cliffs. I can honestly say that this is the coolest place I have ever hiked to, and any nature enthusiast in Alabama has GOT to see it once in their lifetime.
And for all of my Iowa readers, there was a dude in an Iowa t-shirt we met on the trail. Big high fives ensued.
It's wildflower season in the South. Blues, purples, reds, yellows, whites. Lovely.
Everything is SO green! I did not enhance these photos at all.
Then we began the long way home. Ugh. As Dirk put it, "Hell would be having to hike this trail over and over and over again." There were many conversations between the two of us about what it would have been like to be a Civil War Soldier having to traverse this terrain in uniform carrying war gear. Dirk decided he would have cut off his pants and worn shorts. Sexy Short-Wearing Civil War Soldier.
Since it only took us 3 hours (YES THREE HOURS) to hike the 7-mile roundtrip (I was about to fall over. When I saw the car I thought it was a mirage.) We decided to hit up another one of Alabama's attractions: Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, AL. Ever wonder what happens to your luggage when it gets lost? It ends up in Alabama at this place.

And we were asleep by 8:30 last night.