Vacation Adventures '09, part one!

Summertime has finally arrived! So we packed up, loaded the car, and headed out for some long overdue vacation. We have been looking forward to this for a long time now, although we've had to change the date a few times because of work complications. We were finally able to settle on a date that would be a good time to go.
Since Joe has been working so hard at work the last few months and working such long hours, the upper management was able to work out a deal with one of the station's clients on the Gulf coast to get Joe a $500 gift certificate to a nice condo in Gulf Shores. Joe took a week off and we headed down to the beach to relax.
On big car trips like these, we like to do a little extra exploring and see some of the local sites. On the trip down we decided to go a little different route and see Alabama's longest covered bridge that is still in use. It is always nice to go a different way and see different scenery, and all the little towns that you never know about unless you go off the beaten path. You also never know what will be around the next bend.
We have a nice map of Alabama that has all the little roads and topography of the land. It also has local tourist destinations, which is how we found out about this covered bridge, the Swann Bridge. As detailed as this map is, however, we've discovered that they are inaccuracies and usually these inaccuracies make themselves known to us at the most inopportune times. Luckily we were able to find the bridge without any trouble... it was a pretty neat bridge. We were wondering if there was going to be a newer bridge beside it, since the road has to cross the river but there wasn't. When we got down to the bridge and saw how far down the river was and how long the bridge was we were scared to cross it. Instantly, the covered bridge scene from the movie "The Funny Farm" came to mind. The part when the moving people had to cross the covered bridge and it collasped on them because of the weight.
We cautiously proceeded onto the bridge as we rolled our windows down so we could listen to any sounds of wood stress. At first we moved slowly and we could hear the boards clunk and shift below us and every now and then we could see cracks of light peering though the baseboards. When we got halfway across the bridge we could see out the windows and we realized how high we were up. And we could see the water below of the Mulberry River. It was at this moment where are heartbeats got faster and we decided it was time to get off the bridge, so we floored it! Shifting wood, bumping swells of an uneven surface..... it was good to see daylight again.
We parked on the other side and got out and looked around. It had been storming on the trip down but the weather had cleared up and it was nice outside now. We could see people down the river starting a float trip with rafts and kayaks, and made Joe long for his days of canoeing.
Much to Amber's protest, we walked down the sandy, dirty road to the edge of the river. Well can you blame her? We had flip flops on. The river was beautiful. It was shallow but wide and had the occasionally class I and II rapids. Joe wanted to go down it so bad, but we will have to save that for another trip. As we were going back up to the car, Amber, who was extra cautious to not get her feet dirty just happened to be the one of us to find the soft, muddy spot in the road. She got her foot all muddy. After washing her feet off in the river we were on our way. We continued our journey as the map directed us to until we found ourselves on a dirt road going up this mountain. We double-checked the map and confirmed that we were supposed to go over a mountain, but when the road turned into two wheel-wells and stopped at a pile of deadfallen trees and overgrowth, we knew the map had faliled us.
We found sometime outside trapping who we could ask for directions to the road we were looking for. We somehow got way off. We found our road and got back on track and things were going smoothly until we crossed the river where we shouldn't have. And we realized that the map had failed us again. Oh, to have a GPS device right now. We backed up and went down another road and found an old lady to ask directions from, and ended up going the wrong direction.
We finally were able to figure out where we were, and found the interstate,where we floored it to Flordia. You say Florida? Not Gulf Shores? Yep. The first part of our trip we decided to go to Florida to see Joe's relatives, while some of them are still alive. We didn't realize when we left this morning, that dinner was being served at 5:00 in Marianna. We were truckin' the whole way down, but were still an hour and a half late for dinner. None the less dinner was yummy, a southern vegetable feast with a side of roast beef. This is one thing that Joe always loves about going to Marianna... eating Aunt Bernice's delicious southern vegetables. Unfortunately (Great) Aunt Bernice isn't doing very well right now, but her niece Bobby's cooking was still yummy.

We saw a cute little bitty froggy on the ground while we were there, a little bitty green toad. It was so cute. We picked him up and held him and then let him go. We slept for the night at Aunt Cheryl's place