Hiking Trip to Stone Door

Over the past few months we’ve been going on little hikes whenever a dry weekend presented itself. We’ve been going on short hiking trips to Sipsey, Monte Sano and Land Trust trails. Our goal, to build up strength and endurance to be able to take on the more interesting hiking destinations around. Granted, Sipsey is a pretty interesting place, but we haven’t been able to take on the more interesting trails just yet.
Today (actually, last Saturday now) we decided to push ourselves to the next level, and take on a chunk of South Cumberland Recreation Area: Stone Door/Greeter Falls area. Joe knew about this place because it was his first experience with long distance hiking as a boy scout at age 12. Those were fond, yet painful memories since he had no idea what he was getting himself into, a 70 mile hike in one week.
The first leg of our trip took us down the Laurel Trail, 3 miles to the next trailhead. Joe remembered that this trail seemed to last forever, and that hasn’t changed after 18 years. The next leg of our hike took us to Greeter Falls. This trail was only a mile, but much more interesting. We had to cross a swingy, bouncy bridge over an impressive waterfall, Boardtree Falls. The trail then took us along a dynamic route along the base of a bluff line under multiple stone overhangs and through some fun boulder gardens.
Greeter Falls was definitely the highlight of today’s hike. It is split up into two waterfalls, the upper falls and lower falls. The upper falls was impressive, but it was only a primer to what we were about to see at the lower falls. Getting to the lower falls was an adventure in itself. We had to climb down a 100+ foot sheer cliff by way of spiral staircase. Wow, we have never seen a spiral staircase on a hiking trail before. After the spiral staircase, a set of wooden steps down, leading to a grand staircase down to the plunge pool. After all of the rain we’ve had lately, the waterfall was quite impressive. The site, along with the breeze and the roaring, thundering sound was breathtaking. We’re glad we came here.
The Greeter Falls hike was a spur off of our loop. We hiked back to our loop and continued along the Big Creek Rim Trail 3.2 miles to Great Stone Door. Those 3 miles were by far the longest 3 miles of the day. Joe somehow seems to recall this trail being shorter, but we were not sure what he was thinking eighteen years ago. Wow, has it really been that long? By the time we got to Stone Door, our feet were about to fall off and we could’ve drank an ocean. Of course when we got to Stone Door, we had to hike to the bottom and back since we were there. I guess we should have counted how many steps there were to the bottom and back. It felt like a hundred, especially after hiking those 3.2 miles. We just took it easy on the last mile back to the car.
When we started hiking today, we thought we would be hiking for five, maybe six miles, but we ended up hiking over 9 miles. The longest we’ve hiked before this in our marriage, probably since Joe was in Russia was three miles total. We probably will be feeling this for the rest of the week.

P.S. Joe’s feet had several blisters on them, because he was just wearing an old pair of tennis shoes, he didn’t have hiking boots. My feet were just a little sore, because I had just gotten a nice new pair of hiking boots. Our legs were a little sore the next day, but we were not sore for the whole week. We had a great time. We are looking forward to going hiking again.

The night out at a fancy restaurant!

Usually we don’t go to fancy restaurants. Living a humble lifestyle, if we ever eat out, it’s usually either at a local fast food chain or a family restaurant. Last year Joe put quite a few hours in at the station, putting together a new graphic look, saving the station thousands of dollars. Joe wasn’t about to get a raise or compensation for it, but he was given a gift card from the news leadership team for Cotton Row, a fancy restaurant downtown on the square. We have been holding on to the gift card for some time now, hoping there’s no expiration date on it. We finally decided to cash it in this past weekend and go on a date to the fancy restaurant.
Earlier in the day before we went we decided to look at the menu online and see what we all had to choose from, expecting there to be a world of variety. But instead we mainly found seafood dishes which I don’t really care for and most of them were French words and specialty dishes that took a dictionary to understand. We were getting a little bit scared; hopefully they had something we both would like. We got there in the evening and it was freezing outside. Of course we would pick the coldest night of the year to do this.
We had a candlelit table and the restaurant was interesting. They had preserved the history of the old Huntsville building and used that as part of their décor. The walls were ancient brick, and you could see the old wooden support beams in the ceiling. This building used to be a bank and the vault is still in the wall, pretty interesting.
When the waiter came by he explained the menu and had to translate a few words for us. Luckily there were some added dishes that weren’t on the menu and both sounded more appeasing than seafood at the moment.
We ended up ordering a dish of Marscapone Gnocchi, which is basically potato dumplings with some yummy sauce; to our surprise they were really good. I got duck breast with some side of vegetables and pasta mixture. And Joe got what the waiter called the crème de la crème of steak, the Kobe Beef dish.

The waiter said this was so good because the cow was on a careful diet which included white wine and classical music. We thought it was a joke and Joe had to ask if he was serious.
I’ve never heard of feeding a cow alcohol and constantly playing classical music for him. Apparently it has an effect on the tenderness of his muscles. Both dishes were really good.
I’ve never eaten duck before and I was afraid to try it. Joe said it probably tastes like chicken, but after trying it we both think it tastes much better than chicken. The vegetable pasta mixture was really good too, I wish I knew how they made it. It looks like we’ll be doing some duck hunting in the stores now.

Joe’s meat was also really good. Maybe we should go out and get us a cow and play some Mozart for it through Joe’s sound system. Dessert was also good, different, but good. I got a Banana Bavarian something and Joe got peanut butter and jelly something with ice cream, we enjoyed it.
The atmosphere took a while to get used to. Candlelit tables surrounded by rich people in suits who were very chatty, was a big difference from Arby’s and Popeye’s that we’re used to.

Before this, the most expensive restaurant we’ve gone to was Olive Garden. We were discussing how much of a different lifestyle rich people like this have, going out to fancy restaurants every other night to socialize with other rich friends over a glass of expensive wine.
The biggest shock of the night was the bill. We expected it to be high, but not this high. Our total was $121.00, just for the two of us, wow! Joe’s beef was fifty-five dollars.

They must have played that classical music through a high-dollar Bose system! That’s probably the best steak that Joe will ever have eaten.
It was a nice treat but we probably won’t do that again for a long time. Luckily Joe’s gift card paid for a hundred dollars of it, leaving only twenty-one dollars plus tip for us to pay out of pocket. All in all it was a really nice evening with each other out on the frozen town.

The Wooly Worm came to our house!

So we came home after a day full of shopping, put all the groceries away and did some cleaning up. Joe decided to go on the front porch and put the cover over the grill for the winter. Picking the cover up off the ground, he noticed that quite a few critters had made their home underneath the cover over the summer. Most of bugs were Gemini Crickets, spiders and a couple of flies. But there was one thing that he definately did not expect to see.... a wooly worm! Now we had never heard of these before until Channel 19 did a report last year about weather folklore and predicting winter. Joe had to find some pictures of wooly worms to use for the story since you can supposedly predict how harsh or mild a winter will be by the length of his orange band of color.

What he was doing on our front porch, will never know, I guess he just found some shelter underneath an unused vinyl tarp. Now the tarp is gone, we hope he will be okay. Here are a couple of pictures we took of him. Aren't I brave? One thing interesting that we found out, when they get scared, they curl up into a little fuzzy ball like rolly pollies do... he's cute!

Creepy Crawler Bug!!

So I was just sitting out on the front porch with the computer checking my e-mail. I glanced up to the walkway and saw this big bug coming towards me. Having never seen this particular kind of bug before, I wanted to catch it so I could show Joe and see if he knew what it was. I ran inside, grabbed a glass jar and came back outside and he was gone. A few seconds later he came back out from the grass onto the walkway, so I acted swiftly and trapped him in the glass jar. Meanwhile, waiting for Joe to come home I did some researching online and found out he was something called a cow killer. Joe came home, looked at the bug and confirmed what I now knew. He said that's a cow killer! The first he has ever seen in the state. Usually they're only in Florida.
While I was online,I found out....Red velvet ant or "cow killer" The females are wingless and are sometimes mistaken for a large, hairy, orange and black ant. These "ants" are actually wasp! A solitary wasp, the velvet ant does not live in colonies or have a "nest". They are found crawling through lawns, digging around soil, or even in garages where they have wandered in by accident. Velvet ants are not aggressive and will try to escape from you. The females have a very painful sting if handled. The name "Cow Killer Ant" was given to the velvet ant because of the reputation of the female's sting. It is said that the sting is so painful that it could kill a cow. This handsome insect does make a sound (especially when stepped on) but the squeaks of the cow killer ant would hardly be heard over the painful screams, if the person stepping on the wasp was barefoot.

P.S a week later I caught another one in our yard. So it seems like they're migrating to North Alabama, so be careful when you walk outside barefoot.

Our Special Spot!

These pictures show the spot where Joe proposed to me three years ago.

More pictures in the park!

Here are some of my favorties that we took that day!

Pictures in the Park!

My sweet friend took these pictures of us at Big Spring Park.
Thanks Becki!