Monday, May 26, 2008

Shake Rattle and Roll


Memorial Weekend..This has been the first weekend of good weather - Warm (but not too) and Sunny - slight breeze... Just what the holiday Gods ordered..(my sympathies to thos e who experienced Mother Nature's fury in the midwest). One of our extended family, Christiane (I consider her and her sister, Rebecca, to be family)made it up for a a couple of days of R&R away from the hustle and bustle of her life in the city. Unfortunately Ms. Rebecca had to go to Romania on business, but I expect to see her return to the cabin in the near future. These ladies have been absent way too long...So I had a playmate for a couple of days. It was sooooo good.. C and I decided to take the raft out and sip beer(s) and float for a couple of hours, soaking up the sun,the solitude and catching up on all things C & R and NorthGaGal... When we got to the put in, we encountered a Private Property sign and had to figure another approach.. so we decided to do a launch from the bridge - well, a modified launch..but the raft performed admirably...and off we went.. our little river is perfect for a float,





















unlike the Ocoee and Nantahala where we need our skills to get us through...


But the big event was our hike on Sunday.. a wonderful jaunt in the Cohuttas that gave us a close encounter of the nature kind... We were walking on the narrow trail and I was in front and I glanced down and saw this bad boy all stretched out, skipped a step, pointed down, told C to lookout and we both skipped right by Mr. Big Bad Snake...I went back for his picture and we had evidently startled him as much as he had us, he started coiling, and I was trying to get the P&S out of the pack.. and I knelt down to take a shot and man he started to rattle that tail.. YEP No mistaking who he was - a rattler... whoa nelly..



Remember you can click on the picture to see it a bit larger..
C is yelling at me to get away and I am trying to get my knees to move, damn this getting old... where was my lightning speed, (did I ever have lighting speed, must have been dreaming that capability) Anyway - I thanked Mr. Rattler for his cooperation and we high tailed it (no pun intended) on down the trail well outside of striking distance and we both looked at each other and went OH WOW.. It was ironic as we had just been talking about the debate of carrying cell phones and guns when hiking on the AT - and we talked about how you get hurt hiking, ankles, knees and SNAKE BITES... whoaaaa almost too coincidental.. but Mr. Rattler definitely was the talk of a wonderful hike.. C, I enjoyed the weekend so much, looking forward to the next one and I will keep sipping on those mango margaritas (hey it worked they were perfect!).

2 comments:

  1. Oh Morgan! I love reading your blog and I am smiling so big at the retelling of our story. It gives me shivers even to this moment. Beck comes back this Friday and we'll throw some dates out when we can come back for more fun. You are the best and I enjoyed our weekend together. CP

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  2. I happened across your blog a couple of weeks ago and have occassionally dropped in...your post today tells me that we must be neighbors! Hiya neighbor!

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