Thanksgiving 2009 and Howard’s Cave in Trenton, GA

So, I’m very late to the recapping game, but it’s safe to say that I have the best. ever. thanksgiving break thus far. Matt & I, the 3 musketeers (J, J and B), Matt’s dad and his friend rented two log cabins up in Northeast Georgia and we went spelunking! This activity is relatively safe, but is physically tasking as I found out the next day after spending 2 hrs in Howard’s Cave! I was urged to take my precious Nikon D90 into the cave and I was understandably nervous about possibly dropping & breaking that expensive toy! Nevertheless, some things in life can NOT be quantified such as the experience of being in the cave. In addition, I knew that I’d be able to get some kickass pictures from the event and attain eternal fame & glory. 🙂 Not really, but going caving is definitely one of those things that was on my bucket list and I don’t plan to stop doing it anytime soon. Without further ado, here are the pictures from the event below. For more photos of Howard’s Cave, please visit my online gallery of picture at Jane Ullah Photography (and the album is titled “Howard’s Cave” under the “Nature” category.).

cave cave1 cave2

cavemouthcave3

Labor day, part deux

Okay, I lied. I’ve run out of the steam with which I churned out that last post. The long and short story was this: we spent at least 45 mins looking for Sitton’s cave. After almost giving up (I had given up after walking the first mile), Matt found the cave. The state park attendant was very helpful as far as even giving us pamplets on the cave’s whereabouts. I could’ve sworn that the idea of caves there was something of an urban legend because the park ranger and people that our party had talked too seemed reticent about the caves. Well, Sitton’s cave didn’t look well trafficked. Compared to Petty John’s cave, the entrance to Sitton’s cave was ginormous. Just like the caves I’ve read about and seen on TV! I’m putting a small selection of the pictures online.

Now that I don’t have internet access at home, it’ll be a pain to upload these things, one by one. Apparently, the library has disabled the Java Runtime environment from running on their computers. It’s such a pain in the patootie. In other news, I’m almost a full employee. HR hasn’t put my stuff into the system yet so I can’t get an email address. Not getting an email address means I’m cut off from the electronic side of things i.e. online sign-ins, getting on the waitlist for a prime parking spot, et cetera. This part may slightly get on my nerves, but it’ll happen eventually. In the meantime, I’d better brush up on my protocols.

Labor day et al

Man oh man! 😀 I had a blast this weekend. Barring the numerous bug bites and the junk food bonanza (lol), I had an awesome time. So much so that I will not hesitate to do it again as long as my job permits it. What did we not do up in Rising Fawn, GA? We visited the Cloudland Canyon State Park where we camped for 4 days and 3 nights. The first day, we spent over 5  hrs on the road just getting there. I spent about 2 hrs catnapping because I didn’t have much sleep the night before. 🙂 However, day 2 saw us up at 10am and ready to make our way to the actual Cloudland Canyon. My Fujifilm camera didn’t disappoint me as I took gorgeous pictures of everyone. I have just downloaded them to my computer and I am so glad that I overcame my fear of breaking the camera enough to take it on the trip this weekend. We visited the Petty John cave and it was absolutely awesome. I even went into the cave and I was blown away. I am definitely interested in going spelunking, as they say now. Then, we headed up the Crockford-Pigeon mountain (in a car, of course) and visited the ‘Rock Town‘ which has some pretty interesting rock formations. As you can guess, I’ve got pictures of those and I think I’ll be needing Flickr for this task of putting the pictures up online. In a bid to keep our expenses low, I’ve cut off our phone/internet. Actually, it’s still there, but I’ve gotten Paul to get us off that bill for the month of September. Something tells me I’ll want to keep it off for good because it was costing us at least $50 (because we’re paying two-thirds of both phone and internet bills). I figure I’m also doing myself a favor because I’ll be forced to get out of the house and do something else. Anyway, back to the story, we got back, ate and just shot the shit generally. Day 3 saw a mass exodus (slight hyperbole) of Julie and her hubby, Jonathan including Matt’s buddy, Jonathan.  However, Matt, his bud (Big John) and I got to hike into the canyon (at least 5 miles total) to see the dried up waterfalls. This was a torturous hike because it involved stairs. I’ll put pics up much later for thee to be the judge. Right now, I’m running around to get stuff ready for my visit to the HR dept. at my new job which I’m beginning next week. Yay me!! And our last day was, interestingly, my most trying day. lol. Okay, here’s how it went down. Throughout our stay, there’d been whispers of caves being in the state park where we were. Now, my in-laws (my husband included) are serious outdoor fiends and were naturally interested. However, day 4 saw just Matt, myself and his dad pondering where on earth the caves could be hiding. By day 4, I was itching to get home to my e-mail and such. But I was game for a hopefully quick find of the caves. Alas! for it was not to be. By 2pm, we finally got our acts together and made our way to where the caves allegedly were. I’ll continue this story tomorrow. lol.