LA PLAYA- South Carolina

Eating Crawfish

BIKE WEEK @ Myrtle Beach

Myrtle Beach

Annie & Nicole on the boardwalk 

Sunday we drove from the North GA mountains to Myrtle Beach to stay with Annie's friends from Erie, Nicole & Doug.  We got to spend the full moon on beach relaxing for a few days.  Unfortunately we had some rainy days and not so great beach days while we were there, but we made the best of it. It was Bike Week after all.  




Xavier Rudd Concert,Charleston, SC

Couch Surfing family

Concert on the Beach

Thursday we drove down to Charleston and rode our bikes exploring the city during the day and then we went to meet our the family who we were couch surfing with.  Brant and his family were great and fixed us a delicious dinner and had an enjoyable evening with them before we went to the Xavier Rudd Concert!  We rode our bikes a couple blocks to the bar where he was playing.  It was right on the beach and the show was glorious.  

Warrior Dash.

The craziest frickin day of your life. That's how they advertise for this 5k race.  We swam through a lake, crawled in the mud under barbed wire, rope climbed up a wall, ran through the woods, slid down a 50 ft slip & slide and finished up leaping over a wall of fire.  We did this all to get the free beer at the end. Haha.
There were thousands of people up in the north Georgia mountains for this event. People would dress up in some crazy outfits to run.  It's something everyone should try. It was awesome.

Annie and I went up with Linda stubbs, her friend Chris, and Jon met us up in Unicoi state park to camp Friday night. We went mountain biking Sat morning and then moved camp closer to the race where all the other warriors were staying. It was like a big tail gate party and a ridiculously fun weekend.

The Deep South

Asheville - Greenville - Atlanta


We met Mom & Grammy Barber in Asheville at the Grove Park Inn Resort.  We stayed at this amazing hotel for 2 nights with them and went to Courtney & Bobby's wedding in Greenville.  The wedding was beautiful and we had a fun night in Greenville with the family.  Sarah had her first shot of Jager...

We spent a couple nights in Asheville after Mom & Grammy went home.  We went hiking with Uncle Bob & Aunt Lois to some amazing waterfalls in Dupont State Park.  That night we did a pub crawl with them around the city of Asheville with a tour that taught us all kinds of interesting history of the city for example *Nascar evolved from guys with moonshine outdriving the cops during the prohibition.  Another really interesting fact was that Asheville only started to recover from the Great Depression in the late 70s.

We did some awesome mountain biking around the Biltmore property and got to see the largest home in American, and its amazing gardens.   We also biked  & hiked down in the Pisgah forest and drove around the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is such a beautiful part of the country!!  On the top of John's Rock hike overlooking an amazing view this group of elderly people came up with wine and musical instruments and we got a free show!

 Our first couch surfing experience was a success.  We stayed with a cool girl, Ryan, and went to the local minor league baseball game together.  Only downfall was that the first night her dog peed on my pants....

After Asheville we drove back through Greenville and stayed the night with the newly weds, Courtney & Bobby.  We had a nice dinner and evening with them before heading back to Atlanta for a few nights.

In ATL we relaxed some with Sarah, Nate & Jon.  Jen & Dagen were still down there after the wedding so it was fun to spend more time with them.  Cara came with us to a Braves game.  Annie's first time at Turner field.   We bought $1 tickets.  Watched the first 7 inning from the bar in the outfield, Annie caught a t-shirt!  Then we made our way to the lower level on the first base line, got on the jumbo screen singing during the 7th inning stretch, watched Prado hit a grand slam to tie the game, and the Braves won in extra innings.

Atl highlights

Atlanta 4/30 - 5/4  highlights

*chattahoochee river float & vball with rockledge gang
* Melindas jewelry party @ Jenn's
* Code Monaco (Nate's band)
* Renaissance festival.  Hilarious!
* annual egg roll. Sarah won...
* beach volleyball. :)
* toured life university
* braves game was rained out. Stayed @ vanessas
* bike & mojitos.
* lunch with Grace.

Florida (Jan - April)

So far my year (this is Annie writing this post) has been very good. I spent the past 4 months living in singer island, Florida with Grammy and Pop Barber. We spent most days at the beach and in the evenings I would go to work as a waitress at the Bonefish Grill.
We had many visitors at the condo this spring. Two of my good girlfriends, Melissa Kirwin and Tia Dinger, were a able to make it down during their spring breaks. Melissa and I saw Wayne Brady at the comedy club. Tia and I spent an exciting day down in South Beach, Miami. Other visitors we had were Dick and Maxine Carlson, Uncle Bob,cousins Charlie, Sarah, and Jenn and Jessica also made it over a couple times.  At one point we had 8 people sleeping in the condo.
I was able to make a few trips over to Marco island to visit Grammy Gayle and Pop Larry. While with them we drove up to Bradenton to watch dad at the Pittsburgh Pirates fantasy baseball camp. His team lost in the championship game this year. During another visit to Marco I was able to spend time with Aunt Amy and my two cousins Max and Ben from Colorado.
During a kayak trip in Marco with jess and aunt ruth, we paddled out to an island and ended up finding 80 whole sanddollars. I found about 45 myself... I'm still a good potter :)
Jessica and I spent Easter in Marco with Aunt Ruth and her sister Shirl. We went to sunrise service on the beach then dinner and an egg hunt at Shirl's.
After leaving Marco, Jess and I headed north to Orlando. We stayed with our extended family, Chuck and Judy Griffin. We decided they are our 4thish cousins on Pop Larry's side. We stayed with them for 3 nights. They took us out for gator on our last night.
While in Orlando we were able to meet up with Jessica's friend Chris from Ireland. He is working at Disney World for the year so he was able to get us free passes into Epcot for the day. We met back up with Chris when he was done working and went back to The Commons where he lives with all the other foreign workers from Disney. We
Spent the evening hanging out "where the air is crisp" with Chris and a few of his buddies from Ireland, the UK, and Italy.