April 4 - 6; Alabama
By Brian Gilbar
Warning, post contains some graphic medical information!
On Saturday, April 4th we headed out from Nashville to Alabama. We stopped in Beersheba Springs, TN to hike a trail Chris had been on before, the Stone Door Trail, in South Cumberland State Park. The trail was 9 miles long and was definitely challenging, with plenty of ups and downs. The part considered the stone door is a huge crack that you can walk through, and down to the lower trail. The hike was a bit torturous at first as there were swarms of bugs flying around and crawling on us. But we put some bug repellant on and then it was much better. The trail was beautiful, with several water features and some great views.
We stopped for dinner in Jasper, TN at this cute restaurant that reminded me of a restaurant that would be in northern Vermont. We had some decent food and the people there were really nice. Here is the graphic medical part so close your eyes if you don't want to know. As many people know, I have a kidney stone that just won't seem to pass. It hasn't caused too many issues, but when I went to the bathroom at this restaurant there was a lot of blood and some blood clots. No pain or anything, but I was rather anxious after that.
We passed over into Alabama at 9:13 p.m. I only know that because I sent our friend Bill (originally from Alabama) a text message when we crossed the line. After a brief rest area stop we made it the rest of the way to Cheaha State Park and our hotel. It was too dark to see much and very chilly, but we did get some glimpses of Anniston, Alabama (where Bill is from) on the way up to the hotel. We were exhausted so went to bed. This is a picture of our view from during the day.
Sunday was Easter and originally we had planned to hike. However, I was nervous about the medical issues so I spoke to a Nurse on the phone who said to go to urgent care to be seen. We decided to head to Birmingham because there was something Chris wanted to see there and we had called an urgent care place and the answering service said they opened at 1 p.m. First we went to the lodge across from our room for breakfast. It was painful. They had a rather expensive buffet and many of the items were out, including silverware. The food was not good at all. But looking at the dinner menu we decided we would come back for dinner, hoping it would be better. The lodge was kind of cool looking and had a spectacular view as we were up so high. The chandeliers of antlers were quite large and unique.
Off to Birmingham, 80+ miles away. We got to urgent care at 1:10 quite pleased with our timing, only to see someone putting a closed sign on the door. Groan. After many visits and calls to urgent care places we realized they mostly all close on Easter. None of the hospitals had urgent care. After a bit of a meltdown we decided to try to find Sloss Furnaces, the place Chris had wanted to go. On the way we saw an open urgent care! To make a long story short, I had a urinary tract infection most likely from the kidney stone being in me for so long. Got some antibiotics, and by then it was too late to go to Sloss Furnace, so we went bowling instead. We found this really big bowling alley with 40 lanes with only a small handful of people there. It was called Brunswick Riverview Lanes. I scored my highest ever score, a 171, beating my other highest score from a few weeks ago. It was fun, but we had a long drive back to the hotel so we headed back.
We went right to dinner when we got back. They had an amazing barbecue specials menu. Chris ordered mini bbq sandwiches on sweet potato rolls and enjoyed them. I ordered the bbq nachos. They were supposed to have queso cheese on them but they were out so I asked for cheddar. As Chris knows, I HATE the liquid nacho cheese on nachos. So a few minutes later our waitress comes out and very happily lets me know that the cook had some liquid nacho cheese to put on my nachos since they thought I would enjoy it a lot more than the cheddar. I may have imagined it, but I think Chris was grinning. It was nasty, which is too bad because the pork on it with the white bbq sauce was amazing. I didn't eat much but was excited because they had apple cobbler on the menu. Right before she brought it out Chris said "I wonder what can go wrong with that?" I couldn't imagine and thought it would be good. Out comes a bowl of apple pie filling with ice cream, and nothing at all that would indicate it was cobbler. Let's just say that with the food experiences paired with the fact that Chris had chewed gum stuck in his napkin, we decided that was the last meal at the lodge.
Monday morning we headed on our way to North Carolina. It was going to mostly be a travel day but we were excited to get there and see some of my family on Tuesday.
Warning, post contains some graphic medical information!
On Saturday, April 4th we headed out from Nashville to Alabama. We stopped in Beersheba Springs, TN to hike a trail Chris had been on before, the Stone Door Trail, in South Cumberland State Park. The trail was 9 miles long and was definitely challenging, with plenty of ups and downs. The part considered the stone door is a huge crack that you can walk through, and down to the lower trail. The hike was a bit torturous at first as there were swarms of bugs flying around and crawling on us. But we put some bug repellant on and then it was much better. The trail was beautiful, with several water features and some great views.
We stopped for dinner in Jasper, TN at this cute restaurant that reminded me of a restaurant that would be in northern Vermont. We had some decent food and the people there were really nice. Here is the graphic medical part so close your eyes if you don't want to know. As many people know, I have a kidney stone that just won't seem to pass. It hasn't caused too many issues, but when I went to the bathroom at this restaurant there was a lot of blood and some blood clots. No pain or anything, but I was rather anxious after that.
We passed over into Alabama at 9:13 p.m. I only know that because I sent our friend Bill (originally from Alabama) a text message when we crossed the line. After a brief rest area stop we made it the rest of the way to Cheaha State Park and our hotel. It was too dark to see much and very chilly, but we did get some glimpses of Anniston, Alabama (where Bill is from) on the way up to the hotel. We were exhausted so went to bed. This is a picture of our view from during the day.
Sunday was Easter and originally we had planned to hike. However, I was nervous about the medical issues so I spoke to a Nurse on the phone who said to go to urgent care to be seen. We decided to head to Birmingham because there was something Chris wanted to see there and we had called an urgent care place and the answering service said they opened at 1 p.m. First we went to the lodge across from our room for breakfast. It was painful. They had a rather expensive buffet and many of the items were out, including silverware. The food was not good at all. But looking at the dinner menu we decided we would come back for dinner, hoping it would be better. The lodge was kind of cool looking and had a spectacular view as we were up so high. The chandeliers of antlers were quite large and unique.
Off to Birmingham, 80+ miles away. We got to urgent care at 1:10 quite pleased with our timing, only to see someone putting a closed sign on the door. Groan. After many visits and calls to urgent care places we realized they mostly all close on Easter. None of the hospitals had urgent care. After a bit of a meltdown we decided to try to find Sloss Furnaces, the place Chris had wanted to go. On the way we saw an open urgent care! To make a long story short, I had a urinary tract infection most likely from the kidney stone being in me for so long. Got some antibiotics, and by then it was too late to go to Sloss Furnace, so we went bowling instead. We found this really big bowling alley with 40 lanes with only a small handful of people there. It was called Brunswick Riverview Lanes. I scored my highest ever score, a 171, beating my other highest score from a few weeks ago. It was fun, but we had a long drive back to the hotel so we headed back.
We went right to dinner when we got back. They had an amazing barbecue specials menu. Chris ordered mini bbq sandwiches on sweet potato rolls and enjoyed them. I ordered the bbq nachos. They were supposed to have queso cheese on them but they were out so I asked for cheddar. As Chris knows, I HATE the liquid nacho cheese on nachos. So a few minutes later our waitress comes out and very happily lets me know that the cook had some liquid nacho cheese to put on my nachos since they thought I would enjoy it a lot more than the cheddar. I may have imagined it, but I think Chris was grinning. It was nasty, which is too bad because the pork on it with the white bbq sauce was amazing. I didn't eat much but was excited because they had apple cobbler on the menu. Right before she brought it out Chris said "I wonder what can go wrong with that?" I couldn't imagine and thought it would be good. Out comes a bowl of apple pie filling with ice cream, and nothing at all that would indicate it was cobbler. Let's just say that with the food experiences paired with the fact that Chris had chewed gum stuck in his napkin, we decided that was the last meal at the lodge.
Monday morning we headed on our way to North Carolina. It was going to mostly be a travel day but we were excited to get there and see some of my family on Tuesday.
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