(Regarding the title of this post: the thoughtful reader may do well to note that I never had Spring breaks at BYU and Natalie was severely ill during spring break last year. So the only legitimate competition for the title of Best Spring Break Ever occurred way back in high school. Your spring break experiences are automatically disqualified.)
This past week was my spring break and Natalie's & my longtime friend, Missy Bethke came to town (she has family here in Athens). Resplendent shenanigans ensued.
It all began last Friday because my classes were all cancelled. I don't remember what Natalie and I did on Friday. Now I remember. We went to the library and I checked out an entire series of comic books and stayed up really late reading them.
On Saturday, Missy came into town. Natalie and I had to clean our house a lot before she got here. But we slept in instead so I had to clean when Natalie and Missy did stuff. For Dinner we went to the Last Resort Grill, which is a fantastic local restaurant. We also visited a local bookstore and an antique store.
On Sunday, Missy came to church with us and then we went to the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia. There wasn't much blooming or even leafy at the gardens, but it's still a beautiful place and we had fun. It was a beautiful day.
On Monday, we watched Les Miserables at the $2.50 Theater (which was until recently the two-dollar-theater). I don't think you need me to tell you to watch this movie if you haven't yet. I'm going to have to read that book some day. But first I have to get through Atlas Shrugged and
On Tuesday, we went to Treehouse Kid and Craft, an arts and crafts store, so Natalie could sign up for a beginning sewing class she's going to take. It turns out that this store has some of the most amazing children's stuff I've ever seen. They had a two-foot tall monochromatic brontosaurus statue (for shelf decor), a hand-tuned 16-tone silver heirloom rattle, little bow ties that can unroll into superhero capes, awesome art prints, a wooden chalkboard-laptop, and a technicolor inflated rocking/bouncing horse/donkey called Rody (among other things). After visiting Treehouse Kid and craft, Natalie and Missy went to the Georgia Museum of Art on UGA campus while I practiced tuba. After that, we went to the Athens Visitor Center to get information for our future adventures on Wednesday and Thursday.
On Wednesday, we went to Tallulah Gorge State Park. It was a lot of fun. It wasn't a very long hike in terms of mileage, but it was one of the most exhausting hikes I've ever been on in terms of exhaustion units per mile. It was only a five-mile (ish?) hike down the gorge floor along the river to the end of the trail at Bridal Veil Falls and then back up again. Along the way we went up and down 531 stairs, crossed a suspension bridge, crossed a river by jumping from rock to rock (except for when we had to tread water because the river was too high), and climbing across a very slippery boulder that was a cliff face above and went down straight into the river. Missy actually fell in the river at this part and had to swim downstream a little to get to a place where she could climb out of the water. The water was very cold. Luckily, Missy was planning to swim and we had all our electronics in sealed plastic bags. After Missy, fell in, Natalie decided not to do the slippery climbing and waited for me and Missy to hike the rest of the way and back. When we got to the end of the trail, there was a natural waterslide and Missy went for an intentional swim. When we had to climb back across the slippery climbing place, Missy had a much easier time than before and did not fall in. I did not fall in but I had a really hard time climbing across. And I mean a really hard time. I even tore a huge hole in the front of my shirt (and it was my Philmont shirt too!). After that we continued back up the way we came (climbing over boulders, crossing the river, and then up the stairs). It was a lot of stairs and we were all exhausted at the end. Then we got ice cream to refresh ourselves.
RIP Philmont Shirt
Draining the water out of my boots after crossing the river
On Thursday, we went to Atlanta. We visited the place where Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born. There was also a museum we visited where we
learned about the civil rights movement. We visited the Atlanta LDS Temple.
Then we went and got dinner at Gladys Knight and Ron Winan's Chicken and
Waffles. Pretty much everything I had there was the best of that thing I've
ever had. Fried green tomatoes, fried chicken, waffles, mac & cheese, green
beans. It was awesome. They played lots of funk and soul and such, so I used my
Shazam app and now I have a list of all the songs we heard there. There's a
special place in my heart for this kind of music because my mom always played
Earth, Wind, and Fire when I was growing up. And because it rocks.
 |
| "Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in this house; January 15, 1929" |
After Dinner, we went to the Shakespeare Tavern and saw a fantastic production of Much
Ado about Nothing. They took some surprising interpretive liberties, inserting
some contemporary references and humor. It's amazing to me how much life actors
can give to the texts they're reciting. There was even a hurdy gurdy.
On Friday and Saturday Natalie and I watched the entire season of Firefly for
the first time. SO GOOD. We also caught up on sleep and continued recovering
from our hike. "You can't take the sky from me-ee..."
On Sunday we had
dinner with Missy's family again. It's always fun to visit them. They have a
new puppy named Maple. She's beautiful and very enthusiastic, but she has no
idea how big she is.
Go Dawgs!
Well
that pretty much wraps up my account of Spring Break 2013. We had excellent
adventures with excellent company. Aside from the travels I've written about,
we had a great time with Missy just relaxing, conversing, and eating good food.
THAT is a good spring break.
ReplyDelete