Fire on the Mountain

The Boys in the Woods (aka BITW) took a little overnight pilgrimage back to our old camp grounds deep in the hills of Talladega, Alabama to unplug and unwind.  Up here, there's no cell phone reception, no electricity, no running water, no streets, and no stress for miles.  We shoot guns, we eat meat, and tell a lot of funny stories.  It's good times.

RC Cola was first developed in Columbus, GA (my hometown) back in 1905 and is known as the cola of choice for real Southern folks (not rednecks - I think they drink Mountain Dew). Little known fact, Columbus is the same town where a man named John Pemberton first developed the formula for a drink that would later be called Coca Cola.

View from the campsite...used to be able to see the foothills of the Appalachian but it's grown up some.

My friend of 29 years and neighbor since childhood, Larry "Tad" Bailey.

My friend of 29 years and best man, Jason "Dirty" Duncan.  I laugh about him being a "Dirty" cop.

Childhood friend since I can remember and outdoorsman extraordinaire, Shannon Litton. 

That's a WWII 7.62 mauser (complete with bayonet) firing full metal jacket rounds.

That, my friend, is a 16oz hand cut fillet crusted in black pepper and kosher salt then seared over hot coals in a cast iron skillet that was passed down by my great aunt.

Spiders.  Yes, there are lot's of them in the woods, Sissy.

The BITW...order from shortest to tallest is purely coincidental.

Fire on the Mountain.

Boys of Summer & BSU Friends 2003

Fun times...here is a little video for our old BSU crew!!

BITW - The Last Frontier

BITW The Last Frontier

As I look back on some of these photos (see link above) I'm not sure why I haven't posted this story before now. Back in 2003, me and my best friends growing up from infancy, decided that life would be changing quickly for us all soon and it was high time we had one last big adventure. So what did we do?? We pitched in and bought a conversion van (white with pink interior no less), loaded up one warm September day, and went on the road traveling these United States of America.

We laughed harder, smelled more of each other’s smells, talked about everything under the sun, experienced more misadventures, and saw more beautiful places in that short time than I dare say any of us have seen since. We traveled approximately 6,000 miles in only 8+ days and our eyes were literally exhausted from all the site seeing. We found out, there is a limit to how much a person can take in over a short amount of time.

Our route took us through Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, S. and N. Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, and finally back home to the great state of Georgia. I've never been so happy to see a pine tree or a glass of sweet tea in all my life. We saw the Bad Lands, Mt. Rushmore, Custer's Last Stand, world's largest...everything, Bear-tooth Pass, Yellowstone (where I caught a Yellowstone Cut-Throat on the fly), Jackson Hole, Wyoming, The Grand Tetons, Hover Dam, Las Vegas, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, etc, etc, etc.

It is a trip I know I will never forget. We were all a little rough around the edges then. And in the midst of so many things that disappoint me about our country and its direction these pictures are a sobering reminder to me about all the good things about our country and about real friendships. These boys are now men with families of their own. I know we will always be friends, because they are not just my friends but my brothers in Christ. "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." Proverbs 18:24

PS - BITW stands for "Boys In The Woods"