Hey everyone, it's Jason again and I thought I'd drop a little note about our recent travels. Since we are now such jet-setters that would have to include our trip to the Mt. Rushmore area as well as our more recent trip to Florida/Alabama for Mark Bahakel and Natalie Alfano's wedding. As many of you know, while Amanda is an adventurous world traveler, I'm somewhat of a homebody at heart. That's one of the beauties of this journey as it is pushing me out of my comfort zone.
The trip out "west" to the Rapid City/Mt. Rushmore area was fantastic. Keeping a promise from before we were even married, I suggested that we camp one night out there (note that I suggested it...). One of the nurses at my office suggested a KOA campsite that was very near the sights and supposedly very nice/safe. She was correct but there was one pretty big catch...my idea of camping is on the side of a trail in the woods pretty far from others...her idea is crammed in between campers and other tents in a very modern spot with great showers and water/power/cable hookups. I'll grant that the showers were great, but being right next to neighbors, no matter how interesting or nice they were, did cramp our romantic style! Oh well, it was still a fun time and a new experience together. We then followed my idea of sight seeing by paying a big chunk of change to a big tour company to take us to all the major sights including Mt. Rushmore, Needles Highway, the Black Hills, Custer State Park, and many animals including Buffalo. It ended with a Chuck wagon supper which was for me chicken fingers, a potato, beans, apple sauce, and a slice of spice cake. Not healthy but pretty tasty. You've already seen the pictures and so I guess you can fill in the gaps already. Afterward, we went to Deadwood which is basically Upper Midwest very small Las Vegas with TONS of casinos (probably 20 in a 4 block area), a few western shows, a handful of tacky gift shops, and the grave of Wild Bill Hickok...good for a few hours of sightseeing and probably great for a bachelor party but not too much good beyond that.
A few days after getting back to Aberdeen, we flew off to Birmingham and then drove last Thursday down to the beach for Mark's wedding. For those of you who don't know, Mark is one of my best friends from college (and to this day for that matter) and Natalie is the gal I set him up with from Children's hospital. The Judge (Mark's dad Alfred) threw a fantastic "rehearsal" dinner that night with filet mignon, great appetizers, drinks galore, and lots of fun family to meet (we were with Tim King and Justin and Kristen Lamb as basically the only non-family there). It was capped by a very impressive toast by the Judge in which we learned that Mark is in fact a saint...not sure how I missed that during our many colorful adventures in college! The next day was the wedding which was beautiful on the beach but had two minor snags for us folk in the crowd: mean stinging black flies everywhere and blazing sun in our faces with a temperature of about 94 degrees. The reception was fun with catering by PF Chang's (nice Bahakelean touch to have Chinese at a wedding!) and high-falootin' Swisher Sweets cigars for guests with monogrammed "B" bands around them...quite classy and I wish I had a picture to display. The next day was even more Bahakelean when instead of the happy newlyweds heading to their honeymoon they stayed and threw a shrimp boil party for the Bama-Florida game. Other than the shrimp which were fantastic, a highlight for me was that Mark's mom issues (not offers) shots called Alabama slammers for people to take when the Tide rolls to a touchdown. She might be petite but she gets feisty if you try to reject the Slammer!
Oh well, after that we headed back to Birmingham and had some great time with family before flying back to Aberdeen yesterday. The kitties were quite glad to have us back. I hope this is a good update from my perspective and I'll talk to you all again soon.
Jason
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