It's Girl's Weekend here at the Cabin - Woo Hoo!

Independance Day - the relaxed way...

Our life here is very quiet and very relaxed. We don't have a social life.. period. We have nice neighbors and on rare occasions we will socialize with them, but it is rare. Which is fine. Cap'n Steve is not known as a social butterfly. Me, on the other hand, well I like a bit of socializing. So when my friends (what few I have) decide to venture up to the cabin, spending the 2-8 hours that it takes to get here (depending on origination point) I get excited. It is like a breath of fresh air to hang with my girlfriends. It's a wonderful break for me and the same for them. So when two of my favorites decided to come up for the 4th... I was thrilled. Rebecca and Christiane are two sisters that I love dearly and vicariously live a career through each of them. You might recall my Memorial Day post about Christiane and I hanging with our buddy the timber rattler... Well Rebecca took a break from doing good in the world and finally made it up this past weekend. It's been far too long, and she has had a rocky road these past few years, but this spring things started to really look up and now she can look forward. She looks so great - the best I have seen her look in three years. These two girls are gorgeous, smart, artistic, smart, caring, smart, insightful, oh did I mention smart? Spending timing with both of them together is such a treat. They arrived on Friday accompanied by their "3rd sister", Cheryl - who loves Marines - and who grew up about 45 minutes from here. When they arrived we had a beer and loaded the tubes in the truck and off we went to launch for our 2 hour tube trip down our little river. Drinking beer and slowly floating, keeping cool on a hot summer day.. that's about as far away as you can get from their high pressured careers and there were smiles all around. Coming off the float I made my signature margaritas while they prepped dinner. These girls can cook. I have nicknamed them the Silver Palate girls. They were kind enough to bring up all the fixins for an absolutely wonderful meal.. I am still stuffed... We then took up on the lawn while Cap'n Steve entertained us with a small showing of our leftover fireworks from a couple of years ago. What fun. Wish we had more - it was a short display... it is so much more fun when you have an audience... I guess I just can't ooh and aaah enough for Cap'n Steve to play pyromaniac just for me..and we didn't really think to go get any...but alas it was a wonderful relaxing day and I do believe everyone sleeps very well here at the cabin. Most guests choose to sleep on our porch, where they can hear the rapids that are just upstream. High class camping to say the least! The next day, after saying our goodbyes to Cheryl who headed for her parents, we headed for the Ocoee whitewater center. We brought our cameras and beverages and enjoyed a beautiful afternoon whatching the rafters and boaters. I really miss running the Ocoee with Cap'n Steve. We had a lot of fun in our boat. We still run the Nanty a couple of times a year but no more Ocoee... boo hoo.. Also I won't guide our friends down. I don't feel comfortable doing it, and I would hate to make a bonehead move and hurt someone.. Told the gals next time they came up - we would grab a guide from one of the companies and we would all go down.. so looking forward to that...So here are some shots from the afternoon...

These guys must have thought they were out west... an oar rig and no helmets are much more common on western rivers... Eastern rivers are known as narrow and rocky - western rivers are wide and only rocky in the major rapids. You wear a helmet because the chances are very good that if you come out of the raft or boat - you could easily slam your head on a rock - so brain buckets are standard... usually..These guys also had a dog with them - can you see him? Remember you can click on the pictures to see a larger version. Nobody said paddlers were smart...



This looks like guide in training or private boat - can't tell for sure - they all have good form and look like they know what they are doing... I am jealous to say the least...




We decided to hike upstream from the whitewater center and decided to stop at this small rapid, seeing how there appeared to be some recent carnage here, we thought there might be some action to come..Rafts pinned and abandoned lead to many tales...




The looks on guides faces were priceless - and the customers going by are wondering WTF? I can hear those guides now.. spinning some tale...

Here lies good ole raft 17 - it was a workhorse until that new guide from Sunburst threw it under the bus...



Uhh, they told me there would be days like this..



Man, I am glad it was them and not us...



I wonder if they still tipped the guide?




And last but not least.. The guide pointing to the raft and talking to his customers.. "Now this is what will happen if you don't do what I tell you- NOW PADDLE FORWARD - HARD"...

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!).

A Breathe of Fresh Air

This really should be titled Coming Up For Air.. That's what it feels like. Arrived back at the cabin a month ago and have been working the contract big time, finally over the hump this week and should be back to my normal part time work for the foreseeable future.. knock on wood. The first month or so that I am back at the cabin is usually spent getting the weeds under control, mulching the flower beds and recovering from the pollen bombardment. Things settle down by mid May. I have on the agenda to work on the photography. Cap'n Steve should be finished with the garage apartment in the next month or so and I am looking at photographs to print and use as art work. Mainly ones of the area, specifically of the cabin, but some others as well. I have these two that I think will make nice framed prints. The Apple Blossom shown here was taken last week when our apple trees were in bloom. Post processed to give a softer look.

And this picture, to the right, I came across last night - post processed it again and fell in love all over. It looks better when you click on it and open it larger. This is from my dear friends Allen and Linda's lovely home in Athens. I photographed their place on a visit last fall. My favorite people in the world, Linda (and Allen), Debra and Rebecca all have such wonderful decorating taste. I love to go visit them as their homes are a haven. I, on the other hand, seemed to be decoratingly challenged. I see it like gambling for myself, you have to be able to afford to lose. And I just don't have the money to make decorating mistakes. I can buy software, photography accessories and overall geek stuff with confidence, but ask me to buy something for the house and I go into major panic attack and can't decide on anything. Too many choices...but I guess that's kind of what life is about.. the yin yang if you will. Oh well - we certainly don't live in a dump, but I could use a little - make that a lot of help to spruce the houses up...

Food Weakness - In Search Of...

This post was originally written about a month ago - but slacker me is just now getting around to publishing it .. I guess I am not cut out to be a daily or even a weekly blogger...

I've been searching my whole adult life for it.. I think I have found it.. at least as close as I am ever going to relive the pleasure I had so many years ago as a child. It has the power to transport me back in time, to when I was young (6-10 yo) and with my maternal grandparents in Gulfport, Mississippi. I remember going crabbing with my grandmother, playing in wonder on my grandfather's shrimp boat, eating catheads and buttermilk for breakfast, drinking coffee with lots of milk, picking rockychaws (those little prickly stickers found around sand) out of my feat as I crossed over the highway to get to the beach. Have I piqued your interest? Do you have something that is your own little time machine? Think about it. What is it... Is it a smell? Is it a picture? Is it a piece of clothing? Okay - for me, it's My Grandmother's Gumbo. I search every restaurant's menu for the offering, trying it and being dissapointed. But I believe I have found it, in none other than my "back yard" so to speak. My dear friend Debra, who originally hails from Shreveport, and is a fabulous cook, makes THE best gumbo since my grandmother's. While visiting her last weekend we went to a Gumbo cook off so she could scout out the competition, as she was thinking about entering one of these competitions. They have Chili cook offs, Bar-b-q cookoffs and on the Gulf Coast, it's GUMBO... I was in heaven.. or at least I thought I was... some of the so called GUMBO's in that competition had no resemblance to what I grew up loving. Not only was it fun to try about 15 different Gumbos, many of the competitors decked themselves out in "Themes",, which I know Debra was eyeing because she love's herself a good dress up opportunity...The experience was fun, and the gals that won were low on style but big on taste and personality. They were similar in style to Debra's gumbo, but their rue tasted a bit chalky...I believe Debra will enter one soon and I plan on being there to help cheer her on... Maybe the secret ingredient in Gumbo is something I provide. Could it be love? The love I had for my grandmother and the love I have for a dear friend...Some pics of the contestants..