Schlitterbahn Water Park

Leaving st. George Island, our next true destination where we planned to stop and enjoy ourselves is Carlsbad Caverns. It is 1,408 miles from St. George Island, FL to Carlsbad, NM. This is a long way to drive and would of course take a few days. Our approach to the trip is to try and knock out long stretches of miles via ‘driving days’ and then make sure we have time to enjoy ourselves and vacate when we get to destinations. That is why we won’t be jumping day-to-day from site to site. We are going to pick a finite number of spots and really see them…. The two longest stretches are the one we are currently on and then the return trip from Montana to Raleigh. Anyway, in order to make this trip from St. George to Carlsbad manageable, we decided to stop in San Antonio to go to the Schlitterbahn (http://www.schlitterbahn.com/nb/default.asp) – a lifelong dream of christine’s.

We got in line for the first waterslide/roller-coaster. And very quickly advanced to the sign that reads “In 90 minutes you will be experiencing the best roller coaster in the US”. It had been a long time since I had stood in one of those lines, the kind that contain connected rooms of roped off switchbacks that make time stand still. They also give you a chance to come into close proximity with the same 50 people over and over. My previous experiences with this were at six flags, Disneyland, and the Smithsonian institute. You never notice that your ankle doesn’t hurt until you twist it. And in these former lines, lamentable as they were, I didn’t take the time to thank the authorities for requiring clothing beyond swimming attire. At the Schlitterbahn and in particular this first line, the statistics documenting the popularity of tattoos were evident. And the vast majority were clearly regrettable. If you are reading this blog and thinking about getting a tattoo, please take 12 months to think about it before proceeding. It’s like the brady bill, you need a waiting period to cool down. Three noteworthy tats were:

· Owner: 40-year-old Caucasian woman, red hair, not very well maintained

Text: “Thug Life”

Quality: Lowest (bic pen? Inconsistent capitalization, low legibility)

Given the chance for one question: “Is that tattoo in the list of the 10 worst decisions you have made in your life?”

· Owner: 300lb hispanic fellow around 40 years old

Text: “Trust No One”

Quality: Medium, Gothic lettering running across the upper chest from one collar bone to the other

One Question: “I infer from the gimmace and the tattoo that you’re outlook on life is one obtained from many hard years on the street banging and stuff, how do you find yourself at the Schlitterbahn this afternoon?”

· Owner: 18-year old hispanic fellow

Text: “Brownpride”

Quality: High, again, Gothic lettering running across the upper chest from one collar bone to the other, very crisp work

One Question: “Aren’t you good at anything else that you might have pride in?...scrabble? running fast? Eating hot dogs?”

We were at the park for about 5 hours and rode 6 rides. But it was an experience. And Christine was given an undamaged wristband from a lady in a van who thought Christine looked like her mija. So we got in for buy one get one free – or something like that.

St. George Island, FL 6/14-6/21: "Martini Time"

On 6/14 ~60 Moore family members from IL, OH, MD descended upon the Florida panhandle to St. George Island. 14 of us, including all the Blinn's, stayed in a gorgeous 4 story house, "Martini Time", right on the beach. The rest of the clan had houses next door or smaller condos down the way. The short version of a great week is: sun, fun, family, food, drinks (a lot of drinks). The longer version is: Everyone had a long drive on saturday, so we visited, ordered pizza, tested the water, and went to bed early. ("early" considering the rest of the week's bedtime averaged early morning hours) On Sunday and Monday we soaked in the rays, logged many hours reading, and just rested.












Tuesday was kayaking in the oyster beds of Apalachicola Bay. 20 of us geared up and I gotta say: the guides were impressed with our skills. We pushed them into taking us further out to Goose Island and everyone kept paced with what was a semi-difficult paddle. I can say after a week with the Moores: they don't say uncle. Everyone was going to finish that paddle and no one wants to be the first to bed :)








Bob went golfing with Mark and Dave on Wednesday. Wednesday night Pat organized the now famous Low Country Boil for the whole group and we got a group photo with our Moorefest T-Shirts.



Thursday and Friday were days devoted to doing whatever you want to do, much like the rest of the week. Bob and Tara rode bikes to the state park. True to form, Bob's bike popped a few spokes and was inoperable for half the journey. I don't know what he did in the first 29 years of his life, but his bad karma is unmatched. On Thursday, Megan and I went to Apalachicola for shopping and lunch at Tamara's. ( We shared grouper, fish tacos, and Key Lime pie... very Florida and real good!) We all had fresh fish, shrimp, or scallops every night for dinner provided to us by Doug in his yellow trailer by the beach. Doug became legend when Pat questioned him on fresh fish availability later in the day and he replied, "I sell a lot of fish, Baby!"

Our house was dog-friendly so we had three dogs there (Dee and Daisy the boston terriers and Molly the Yellow Lab). The house was dog-friendly but two of the occupants were explicitly not dog-friendly – which created an interesting dynamic. So they were primarily quarantined. We brought a collapseable dog-bed for dee and put her in it the first night. 90 minutes later she had nearly chewed through the nylon wall. So she spent much of the time chained to the hitch in the carport of the house. Which was sad. However because she apparently thought she was being punished for unspeakable bad behavior, she is now a reformed obedient dog. Whenever she steps out of line, I show her a picture of broken spirit Dee chained to the wall and she falls in line.

All over the island are small ‘ghost crabs’. They are called ghost crabs because they appear anwhere from white to translucent depending on the time of day. They will pinch your toes if you step on them but otherwise live and let live. But the dogs don’t subscribe to that same philosophy. So the last night we caught Dee vs Ghost Crab. This bastard was big and was not backing down. I think he just got tired and went into the gulf to take a rest. Dee had pent up aggression on her side from being tied to a post for a week.

Friday the 13th

Thursday night started peacefully but about 2am a storm came in and it rained for about 3 hours. An angry rain. So we got up around 8 and it took us a couple hours to pack up - and much of the stuff was soaked through. We got on the road around 10:30 and our next destination was St. George Island, Florida where we are meeting my mom's side of the family (about 50 of them) to stay on the island for a week. Our goal for friday was to get to south georgia so that the drive to St. George Island Saturday was short.

We got out of the mountains and around Atlanta then down through Columbus without any issue. Right as we started looking for a place to set up the tent, a storm cloud appeared in the west and came overhead and started raining. It was about 5 pm so we decided to keep driving - and if the rain kept up then we were going to pop for a hotel. We drove around Blakely in the rain and as we came up to a stop we heard a noise under the element then felt something wrong with how it was driving. I pulled over and got out to look (again, in a pretty steady rain). Right as I got out, I could hear a hissing sound. I walked around to the back right tire and the hissing grew louder. It had only been 90 seconds and the tire was visibly deflated. I looked up a service station on the garmin and it was only 1.1 miles away, so we drove back into blakely and made it to a service station that sold tires.

The fellas there took a look at it and pulled out a massive peice of steel. The tire was unsalvageable and he didn't have the right size tires for the element. So they plugged it for $15 and we drove 40 miles to the Bainbridge walmart and replaced the back tires for $250. There is good news in all of this. The first is that I replaced two tires about a month ago and moved the new ones to the front so the tire that was destroyed had about 41,000 miles on it. Now all our tires are the same age. The second piece of good news is that our president George Herbert Walker Bush had wired $600 to Christine's bank account yesterday morning so he paid for our tires.....kind of. In order to avoid further friday the 13th action, we got a hotel across from the Walmart and ordered a pizza. The hotel had a perfect motivational picture next to the door that reflected the lesson we learned - it takes teamwork between Bob, Christine, Dee and GW to get the tire fixed and stay the course.

Nantahala National Forest, Western NC

6/12/08 - (this is Christine for the first time, for better or worse). We woke up after a rain storm that sounded unsurvivable in the middle of the night, but were pleasantly surprised in the morning to find that the thick forest cover kept a lot of water out. In fact it didn't even fully put out the "blinnferno" raging in the fire pit the night before. The morning was sunny and warm; a perfect remedy for damp towels and tent. Bob made coffee as he does every morning while I sleep in. I did the dishes the night before. Although we are unemployed, our days manage to fill up with tasks that were unremarkable back in Raleigh. Cooking meals, showering, making coffee, and washing dishes require planning and coordination. (Not that I'm trying to say we're employed in some unfair way to all those who are employed.... we are not.) Anyways, Bob made coffee and we headed out to Rufus Glen Trail. Rufus Glen is an easy 1 mile trail that has rewards worth 5 miles. A cool lush jungle leading up to a small waterfall that you think will do just fine, and then rounding the bend into a huge cascading waterfall that is surprisingly huge. No one is there, and it's so worth seeing. The trail goes right up to the pool and the falls are powerful enough to splash you real good if it's rained recently. Bob and Deefur swam, I sat out b/c I don't like to put my hiking boots back on with wet feet.




Then we hiked out and spent the rest of the afternoon at Creekside Lak Recreation Area whiche was attached to our campground and free to us campers. It's a small swimming beach with a swim out dive platform and a lake trail. Calm and quiet with a few locals (who agreed to sit with deefur while we swam b/c otherwise she cries), a serene view, and a picnic with a fresh tomato we got from a roadside produce stand.




Before going back to camp we made a pitstop at Cullasaja Gorge which is, well I don't know what the hell it is, but it's a creek that falls over some rocks into a very deep swimming hole of sorts. Folks have taken to jumping off the cliffs into this abyss and calling it fun. So naturally Bob (and then me after some internal debate) jumped off. Probably about 20' and we captured the 2 of us on film. I got some hootin' and hollerin' from the local bystanders, which Bob said had something to do with my somewhat unsecured bikini top, but I feel it had to do with my impeccable cannonball. It was an invigorating and fun way to end a good day. We closed the night by cooking cheeseburgers and drinking a couple cold beers.

Yellow Mountain

We woke up on Weds morning and ate some breakfast. Left the campsite at around 10 am and headed north towards franklin, NC. We drove by the Callusalla Falls which are in some massive gorge. They are the largest falls east of the Mississippi. But it is tough to get a view of them other than the glimpse you get from a treacherous winding two lane road. The locals drive the roads like they are straight and wide so they aren’t too happy with tourists driving 13 miles an hour while white-knuckling the steering wheel. We made a couple turns and got to the trailhead for the Yellow Mountain Fire Tower. From this tower at 5,200 feet, you can see Georgia, Tennessee and of course NC. Satellites have put fire towers out of business, but the forest service built a couple back up for trail destinations.

The trail started at 4,300 feet and we knew the fire tower was at about 5,000 feet. The trail was out and back 4.8 miles each way. So we assumed it would be a low-grade ascent. It turned out that the start and end elevations were accurate but in the middle there were a couple lesser peaks and valleys so it was some work. After running out of water the previous week we maxed out our capacity. We started out with just a little over two gallons.

The trail was pretty rugged and we started later in the day than we wanted to so it was getting hot. But it was mainly in the shade so it wasn't too bad. Some bugs but nothing unbearable. About three hours into the hike, we encountered a structure that could be considered a fire tower (if'n you have no knowledge of fire towers) but it was rather disappointing. We kept going past it and made a few more turns before we got to what was obviously the bonafide fire tower. It was only two stories but because it was at the crest of a bald, the view from the second level was 360 degrees and vast.






After hanging out for a while we headed back down the mountain - and still towards the top we almost stepped on the snake in the attached video. I was convinced it was a copperhead, but i think it is a rat snake. We avoided it.

We made it back to the car with a little water to spare. It took a little under 7 hours to do the 9.6 mile trip. I had to carry the dog some of the last bit. Then we went and got ice cream.

Leaving Raleigh

We left Raleigh at 9am on Tuesday morning. Thursday through Monday had all been triple digit temperature days so we were ready to leave. Raleigh summer heat is less than desirable. We headed west on 40 towards the south portion of the Appalachian mountains – close to the North Carolina / Georgia border. Prior to reaching Ashville, we turned south on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Blue Ridge parkway was built in the 30’s as an economic distribution to the not so well-off Appalachian country folks. It runs along the highest points of the Appalachian mountains for about 469 miles from Virginia to NC. We were only on it for about 40 miles, but the views are amazing. The speed limit is 45 and it looks like a two-lane bi-way. The road weaves from the western face to the eastern face as it curves through the peaks and every ¼ mile or so there is a scenic overlook.

There were small storm systems working through the mountains too so at some of the lookouts we could see the split from where it was raining to where it was clear and sunny. It took us about two hours to go the 40 miles.

There are also short tunnels every mile or so.

The blue ridge highway does not however have any gas stations. So after cruising along for an hour or so, we started looking for a gas station with the garmin. It told us there was one 5.2 miles away. But 5.2 miles in these here hills was about a 40 minute drive. The road descending from the parkway was like driving on a steep curved driveway to some billionaires mansion for 10 miles. The detour did take us to the foot of Cold Mouintain.

We left the parkway and headed south towards highlands and found a campsite at Van Hook Glade Campground in the Nantahala National Forest. It is at 3200 feet.

We asked the campground host about canoeing around the area and he sent us over to a different campsite. It was a couple from Ohio who had been coming to this site for 7 years. We sat at their fire and smoked a cigar. They gave us a map and a couple tips on where to hike, swim, canoe, eat, etc. And they gave us a MRE (meal ready to eat of sweet pork and two bales of firewood). They met dee and told us about how they had to put down their 14 year old german shepherd a couple weeks ago and that this was their first camping trip without him.