Nice Hike

The water falling over the damn.

Waterfall

I took a nice hike in Roswell one afternoon. I was surprised to find an old cotton mill with a damn and a waterfall.

Some of the old equipment.

The mill from above

It was at the site of the Roswell Mill - a cotton mill from 1839. It was powered by the running water and a series of belts. The water is from Vickery Creek also known as Big Creek. It runs to the Chattahoochee River.

A covered bridge over the creek

There is also a nice covered bridge to more trails on the other side of the creek.

View of the creek from the other side.

One of the old buildings used with the mill. You can see the bridge in the background.

It was beautiful weather and a nice hike. I'm looking forward to going again!!

Notre Dame!

We took our annual visit to South Bend on the weekend of Sept 17th to see the Fighting Irish play Michigan State. (Sorry I'm so behind on my blogging but that means I've been busy doing things to blog about!)
Leah met us there for the weekend but Eric was on an assignment in Virginia Beach so he couldn't make it. :-( He's as big a ND fan as any of us but has never been to a home game. Next year that has got to change.

Aldo, Leah and Jim check out the hockey practice

Jim's business associate and friend from Boston, Aldo, had mentioned that seeing a Notre Dame home game was on his bucket list so he took our extra ticket and spent the weekend with us.

Friday we went to the bookstore and of course had to stop at Legends for a beverage.

The Notre Dame Stadium - viewing it from Legends

 The sky that day was a little dreary but not for long. Saturday was perfect fall weather - almost hot at times. There was a lot of spirit around campus after losing the first two games. Everyone still thought they could turn the season around.

We met our friends from Sioux City and had a great time.

 

Our tailgate site

The view from our tailgate - Golden Dome and touchdown Jesus.

This year Leah had to make sure she tried an elephant ear!

The group tailgating beside us had a Jenga game made out of 2x4 wood. They made it into a drinking game and when you pulled your peice it told you what to drink. Mostly it was shots of punch using a turkey baster - it was quite interesting. One of the girls - small, about 90 pounds, drew - "drink 4 shots". She thought that might be a bad idea so she drafted some unnamed members of our group to help her out.

The Jenga game

The game was fun, our seats were awesome and ND won.

View from our seats! Isn't that just a classic college football site?

At half time they did a 9/11 tribute. First one of the ND band members sand I'm proud to be an American - the microphone was not working well and soon the entire stadium sang along. Then both bands played together - as they had done 10years ago - playing Amazing Grace - and again the entire stadium sang along. It was very moving.
After the game we went to mass on campus in one of the dorms - always crowded but fun.
The weekend ended too fast, we drove back to Chicago to fly home.

Labor Day, Florida Panhandle, Visiting Eric and Tropical Storm Lee!

Navarre Beach - a few people braved the waves when it wasn't raining

We took a road trip Labor Day weekend to visit Eric in Navarre Fl. This in on the Florida Panhandle, near Eglin AFB where he is stationed. It is about 5 hours away. We left on Friday after work and spent the night in Montgmery AL. That evening we drove through Auburn AL and saw lots of people headed to a weekend of college football. And drove in to Navarre the next day.
All week news of the coming Tropical Storm Lee made us wonder what the weather would be like. As we drove on Saturday morning the weather was sunny and warm. We didn't see much rain on the trip until we crossed in the state of Florida at Dixonville AL. Then it started to sprinkle, rain off and on. By Saturday evening, the rains picked up and Sunday it hit us full force. During Mass we had lots of thunder, lightening and rain.  (Funny cuz last time we were there for Christmas there was a tornado warning during Mass.)
We stayed in a hotel next to Eric's apartment and we were on the ground floor. I think that made us feel safer than the upper floors but I was worried something might crash through the window. We faced away from the Gulf so that helped too.

The view from our hotel room

We did get a reprieve during the day to go check out the Navarre Pier. It was windy with lots of high waves but not raining at the time.

Navarre Pier

On the pier, the wind us blowing straight back

We walked to the end of the pier, some people we actually fishing. As soon as we got back to the beach it started to rain. We had to stay dry in a near by "Hurricaine Shelter"

And thankfully - they served beverages.

Most of the weekend we hung out at the hotel, watching football and tornado warnings. Sunday nite we went to Helen Backs - good place for pizza if you every visit.

Helen Backs or another "Hurricaine Shelter"

Monday we drove back to Atlanta, followed the entire trip by Tropical Storm Lee. As we arrived home, tornado warnings were in effect for parts of the city. There was some damage to the area but not close to our house. And as you know Lee continued up the coast causing a lot of damage.
We felt thankful to be able to make the trip, spend time with Eric and be back home safe and sound.

Visit to northern Georgia

Just a quick note about one of our weekend adventures.
One of the OR RNs at Roswell Surgery Center - Mark - has a cabin near Blue Ridge GA. It is "the gateway to the Blue Ridge Mountains" and at the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. It is about 2 hours from our house. He invited the staff for a Saturday gathering.
We actually drove through the Chattahoochee National Forest to get there. Once we got in the mountainous area there were several heavy rain showers. They would start and stop as we drove along. We came around a curve and a tree was laying across the road. It wasn't huge, maybe 20 inches around and we thought we could move it ourselves. But it was during a heavy downpour so we decided we would wait a few minutes, hoping the rain would turn to a drizzle.  As we waited a truck came behind us and went around us. At first it looked as though he was going to try to drive over it or move it with his truck. He soon realized that wasn't going to work. Then they started to jump out to move it and decided the rain was too heavy. Next a group of  "Wild Hogs" - old guys on motorcycles came along. Since they were in rain gear and wet so they stopped and moved the tree. (Also, one guy in the truck decided to take his shirt off and help - oh I wish he hadn't done that!)

Guys moving the tree!

Thanks guys!

So we proceeded to Mark's cabin with out getting wet!

He has a beautiful place right on the Toccoa River.

Sitting out on the front porch! Awesome porch and awesome view!

Some people went tubing!



As you cas see by the time we got there it was sunny and warm. We enjoyed spending time with Mark and his wife. And as always we liked the road trip - especially with the tree adventure!

Update on work and the PGA Championship

It's been a while since I updated  - sorry! It's not that there is nothing to tell but it has been busy. Work is going well, I do have a preference now for one of the surgery centers. I think it's partially the people there are more diverse - not everyone is from Georgia. Also, I work preop there and at the other place I work mostly PACU. So it's more my comfort zone and seem to be a better fit. For now though I will stay at both places - mainly for "political reasons".

The PGA championship was held in Georgia this year at the Atlanta Athletic Club. On one of our Sunday afternoon drives we decided to go to Johns Creek. One of Jim's coworkers lives there and we decided to check it out. It would be like driving out to ? Queen Creek - maybe not as far. Anyway, I checked to see if there was anything going on of interest that day. I found out that it would be the site of the PGA Championship August 8 - 11th. Because of that they were having a PGA Championship history exhibit. We decided to check it out on our drive.
It was just an exhibit in an empty store front of a strip mall. It had a plaque for each year showing the winner and some sort of memorabilia - club, shoe, glove. As we went through they had a quiz to fill out. Nothing too hard - who won in 19... , who won the last time it was in Atlanta etc. Jim knew several answers and the others were right there in the exhibit. They said if you turned it in you would be in a drawing for prizes. Of course, I'm thinking it was some kind of marketing scam, But we did turn ours in.
Two weeks later I got a call. "Remember when you fill out the quiz at the exhibit?" "Yes..." I said expecting to hear the pitch. "You won two week long passes to the tournament!"  "What? Really?"
Yes I did! Which was great for two reasons: they were worth $285 each! and we wanted to go on Sunday which would cost $75 each. 
So I gave tickets to a friend at work, Jim gave some to a customer and friends at work. But we saved Sunday for us.
It was a great day, for a while quite hot in the sun. But we settled at the 16th hole as the final groups came in. No cameras were allowed but Jim had the need to "check his phone" quite frequently resulting in quite a number of pictures of the day.

The fans sitting on the 16th hole.

Our view on the 16th hole.

We followed the last group to the 18th hole. Jason Dufner had been in the lead and he was a fan favorite being from Auburn Al. However in the last two holes Keegan Bradley came back and tied him. So they had to go back to 16 and play 3 more holes.
We had earpieces that gave the radio broadcast - which was great to keep up with everything. So we stayed at 18, listened and waited. As they came back Keegan Bradley was in the lead, Dufner had a chance to tie again but wasn't able. So Bradley - a rookie in his first major tournament won. It was quite exciting the crowd went crazy.

The crowd follows the golfers to 18

The winner!

A good time was had by all!
Sorry, I couldn't really zoom or edit the pictures too much - they get too blurry.

I have more posts so hopefully the next day or two I can get up to date!

Around Atlanta

While Leah was here we did a couple of sight seeing trips.
The first on was to visit Lake Lanier. It is a very big lake just 30 miles north from our home in Sandy  Springs. We drove up Sunday morning, rented a wave runner and hung out there for about 4 hours.

Jim and Leah getting ready to take off.

Here we go!!!

We toured around the lake. At first it was very quiet, not a lot of waves. We looked around at some of the homes - their were some unbelievable "lake" homes! We didn't see that much - it had lots of little fingers and coves.

We took turns riding. We could just pull up to the dock and switch.

Later Leah went for a ride on her own. It was getting busier so there were more waves to jump.

Lunch time.

After we finished we stayed and have some food and drinks at the little restaurant. We headed back and were home by 4pm. It was awesome how close it is!


Leah and I also took an excursion to downtown Atlanta. We took the Marta (lite rail - for all you Phoenician's). Our first stop was Underground Atlanta - former train station turned into a shopping center. We had a nice lunch but other than that it was kind of ghetto. The tourist books make it sound better than it is. But it is interesting to think of it historically.

Downtown Atlanta!

Olympic Park

We walked from Underground Atlanta to the World of Coke. The CNN building was there, also we walked by the Olympic park.
As we walked we saw a restaurant called "Dania's" We took a picture to send to Leah's friend Dania who just left Atlanta to head off the Miami and Equador for the summer.

We did the World of Coke tour. It was fun to see the history but also of course kind of like a big Coke commercial.

Giant Coke sign

We are going to watch the 3D coke movie!

We especdially enjooyed the taste testing at the end of the tour. You could try different beverages from around the world, all made by Coke - of course!

Taste testing, some were not so good!

Leah's favorite Mr. Pibb!!

Getting our free little bottle of  Coke at the end of tour.

It was a fun day, nice to see downtown Atlanta and the World of Coke. I'm happy to say I've been there but not ready to see it again for a while. In the end we enjoyed both days but the day at the lake has been the high light of our Georgia tours.
But.. we hope to have many more!