Holy Smoke

Tuesday, November 2, 2010


Life in the hills of northern Georgia began well today...we slept late and Jeff brought me coffee in bed. We ate lunch at a local place in Ellijay (home of the famous telephone directory) and headed up into even higher ground until we reached Noontootla Creek Falls (a.k.a NCF) for our sporting clays adventure. For those readers who aren't familiar with sporting clays, click here to understand this sport. For those readers who didn't understand that, here is Jeff's version: "similar to trap and skeet but moving to 12 different stations where the clay pigeons come at you from any direction - two per station...more similar to hunting birds than either trap or skeet - and the natural terrain is always fun...in Houston, you have bushes and trees to work around however here, valley, hills and everything in between, together with colorful trees."

Okie dokie, there you have it. Oh wait, here's the cool part...Jeff pulled out a shooting vest he bought me back in Houston (surprise!) so I can have pockets to hold my own shotgun shells and don't have to have him hold them for me. I so looked the part! We hopped into a golf cart and drove through all 12 stations, shooting the crap heck out of those bright orange saucers called "clay pigeons". Well, Jeff shot up more of them than I did, by far, but for my first time on such a course, I did a pretty good job. And, I shot a "rabbit"! Don't worry, I didn't kill a bunny, but I nailed a clay pigeon that bounces across the ground imitating a rabbit scampering across the terrain...fyi, they are hard targets to hit. We had so much fun that we did a second half round...my idea, I'll have you know. We shot 300 rounds between us. My arms will be sore tomorrow, but so worth it. There we were up in the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains on a fall day (it was overcast, but still very pretty) and it was so cool being in such a beautiful setting. Bang, bang.

Love it when I nail a tough one!

Love this picture...

Next, we stopped at a grocery store and picked up some groceries for dinner and headed back to the lodge. While our potatoes baked late in the afternoon, Jeff and I fished on the lake out our back door. I caught a bass and he caught nothing, but I refrained from rubbing it in. He made our dinner and we ate steak, baked potatoes and asparagus by the fire. We enjoyed visiting with a couple from Louisville who had just arrived for a stay at the lodge. They are Republican, moderate Baptists who like Fox News, so we shared our bottle of wine with them while watching the election returns. We also shared our trail mix.

Holy smoke, this was a very good J&M day!