Journey to PinkAppleCorica, part three

Stephanie and I take a tour of a cave and a stunning underground waterfall, Ruby Falls. The weirdest thing about it is how normal it feels to be hundreds of feet underground. (Another first for me.)




(This is just colored lighting in the pictures below.)






Here's a view of Chattanooga:




We share a cupcake there. Because we're ladybloggers, and cupcake-sharing is what happens if a lady blogger meets a ladyblogger coming through the rye.




Peanut butter chocolate. Oh yes.





We have breakfast at The Cracker Barrel on my last day — a highly authentic experience, I am told.




On the way back to her home to pick up my suitcases, Steph drives by an abandoned public pool I noticed earlier so that I can climb in and take some pictures.






After that it's the long drive to the airport, and some tight hugs with Steph and her papa to say goodbye. For now.

Journey to PinkAppleCorica, part two

I saw three different states in the few days that I'm with Stephanie: Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. That's that for my second resolution for the year. Yay.

Stephanie prepared a vegetarian Southern feast one day, as she promised months ago in a letter to do if I ever made it to her home. Fried okra, cornbread, pinto beans, coleslaw, fried potatoes....mmm. And we enjoyed it with her grandparents. Real live Southern grandparents!

Steph's a real photographer in that you can tell she is most fully herself when she has a camera to her eye. She almost...transforms when she takes up her camera.

I loved seeing that. I love camera people.

Journey to PinkAppleCorica, part one

As I mentioned, I spent part of my spring break visiting my dear blogger friend and pen pal Stephanie, the photographer behind PinkAppleCore. She was much more prompt about relating our adventures together and blogging some photographic documentation:

part one
part two
part three
part four

She lives in the Deep South, and I had never been anywhere in the South before. It was an experience to be sure. (The good kind.) Except for the common government and history, I could have been in another country. It's like this old Irish man told me in Iceland: there are really four or five Americas.

Although to be fair, there was the added difference of Stephanie's hometown being a leetle blue-collar town, while I'm used to traveling in cities.

If I had to itemize what makes it so different for me.. .

• The accents. Some soft and pretty and drawly (like my Steph's) and some more twangy.

• The food. Fried and hearty and homey with weird beasts like okra. Even the Chinese buffet had all these things incorporating fried potatoes. Teehee. Bottom line: so tasty. I've never been so continually full in my memory.

• Southern hospitality and graciousness? Um, YES.

• Not to mention more hello-ing with strangers.

• Fireworks and guns.

• Beautiful foreign-feeling (to me) trees and mountains.

• Abandoned buildings. Not something you see often in California.