Fotos & Times of a Blue Ridger

Steve standing under an Ancient Live Oak on our drive down to Orange Beach.

With the New Year ringing in some changes I decided to put down my pizza peel and head south to visit Steve at Fort Rucker, AL. Chad was free for the week so we packed up the old RSX and hit the road with dreams of mountains and beaches on our minds.

However, in southern Virginia as we drove high into the mountains of the states plateau the temperature plummeted and the weather took turn for the worse. Bridges were covered in a sheet of ice and cars spun off to the sides left and right. The road became hidden under snow and ice and we began to accept the notion that if we did not slide into a ditch, traffic would certainly be blocked and either way we would be spending the night on the side of a desolate highway in a freak snow storm. Fortuna had other plans, and we were able to keep moving at five to ten miles an hour (if we had stopped at any point regaining forward momentum would have not been possible). We passed around fifty car accidents and very narrowly escaped being mowed over by an oncoming tractor trailer that jack knifed and plowed through the median. Some how we made it to Charlotte. We got dinner with my Grandmother and got a good nights rest, weary from the white knuckled driving.

After a tour of Charlotte we headed out to the Smokeys with our sights on hiking Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak in the east. But snow on the Parkway kept the peak at bay. After driving all over the valleys in a bitter cold we ended up in Hot Springs, NC and got a camping site and prepared for the freezing night ahead (temps were around 11 degrees). A soak in the redneck spa at the hot springs and a few libations from the local watering hole got us in sleep mode. The next day we headed south to see if we could climb Laurel Knob, the largest rock out cropping east of the Mississippi with climbs over 1,400 feet high. Again cold temps and snow prevented us from climbing, so we went for a hike trying to get to the base of the cliffs. Bad directions and a incomplete map got us off miles in woods far from our goal. We hiked back out, made couple pb&j's and hit the road.

Throwing in the climbing towel, we headed down south and got a hotel in Auburn, Al. In the morning we went for a long run around the town of Auburn and the campus, which in early January is more or less a ghost town. Got some great BBQ at Byron's Smokehouse and drove off in search of Alabama's only sport climbing crag. It was small, glorified bouldering really, Chad knocked out the State's hardest route and we got back in the car and pointed south towards Dothan. We arrived late in the afternoon. Hung out with Steve for a bit and went to sleep.

Early the next morning Chad and I headed down through three hours of foggy roads to the Gulf Coast, Apalachiacola to be exact. We had some great oysters on the water and walked around town for a while before crossing the bridge over to Saint George Island. We walked around on the beach, went for a swim in the freezing waters and fought off a wave of black flies until we retreated for the car.

The next morning Steve was off duty for the weekend and we all headed down to Orange Beach to stay with the Buckleys. Mr. Buckley took the three of us and his guide, for lack of a better term, Curtis and one of Curtis's friends out into the Gulf of a bit of fishing. We thought we would just be out for a couple few hours, but Curtis had other plans and decided to go all the way and take the boat out as far as it could go and so we endured three hours and forty minutes of banging into waves and skirting thunderstorms to reach "the beer can" a large oil rig seventy miles out in the Gulf. We arrived just before sundown and threw our lines to the waves. Steve caught a huge four foot Mahi Mahi right off the bat. We had more luck over the next few hours scoring yellow and black fin tuna. After the gas tank hit the half way mark and the last of the ruff necks watching us from high on the oil rig had turned in we pulled the lines and set a course back to Orange Bech. The sea became more calm and the trip back to land was quite a bit smoother, with the boat only occasionally bouncing off the waves at queer angle that made you wonder "wear are the life vests?

The next morning we headed back to Fort Rucker, stopping at the Ponce de Leone springs for a birthday swim in the "fountain of youth". Back at base I cooked up a dinner with the Mahi Mahi that Steve had caught and we all sat around the fire drinking Imperials and declaring the weekend a success.

The trip back home went smoothly with a layover in Winston-Salem with Marshall. Good times being shown around the city and then the next day it was back home and back to reality. It was great trip and a much needed break from the cabin fever that living in Rapp can produce, especially in the winter.