Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Bridges of Greenville County, SC

Addenum to the weekend adventures - Adventures in Flying My flight from RDU to GSP took me to IAD (Dulles, yes, up to Washington, DC to then fly down to Greenville, SC).  The departure time from RDU on Saturday morning was to be at 6:10am.  But.  Yes, there is a "but".  Taxied out to have a bit of frost taken off the wings, but the de-icing truck was broke.  So, there we sat, burning fuel.  Used up so much that we had to turn around and re-fuel, then back to the de-icing truck, which was now operational.  Bad thing, though, it was now around 8am.  My connecting flight in DC had a departure of 8:09am.  Yep.  Missed that connection.

Arrive in DC around 9:40am, United automatically rebooked me on the next available flight, which was to depart at 12:21pm.  Hanging out in IAD when I should have already been in G'ville (and, I would have considering I was up at 3am and could have driven down there...).  Time to board the plane at 12pm and what do we hear???  Flight 7896 from IAD to GSP has been delayed until 1:45pm.  OMFG.  I'm so pissed.  Missing all day Saturday with the bf and spending my time in an airport.  So, I give the bf a call and tell him to just go on to work at 3:30 because I doubt I will be there by then and will just catch a cab.

The fying gods must have been looking out for me this time...my flight touched down at 2:45pm.  I swear, if there had been any old ladies/children to get in my way on the way to pick my bag up and meet the bf, I would have knocked them over & out of my way! :)  We had just enough time to get me home, say "hi" and then he left for work.

The rest of the weekend was as much quality time with the bf as possible since we don't see each other that often (working on a solution to that though).  I planned on flying back home Tuesday morning.  Well, guess what??  Dense fog in the G'ville area.  My plane is circling the airport waiting to land and we now hear this - "if the plane cannot land in the next 10-15min, the plane will be diverted to Columbia".  No mention of what plane we would be on to IAD.  Grrrrrrrrrr.  And, the flight from IAD to RDU, departing at 12:21pm, was already delayed for an hour.

My plans of getting back to Raleigh and working for 3-4hr went out the door.  All I wanted was to get home.  Finally arrived at RDU around 2pm, picked up the bag, headed home.  Well, I have one more surprise...while unpacking, I find a note card from TSA - my bag was randomly selected to be searched.  I think next time, I'll just drive. :)

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So, the bf flew me down to Greenville for the weekend (this past weekend - Saturday thru Tuesday) and on Monday, he took me to see the only original covered bridge left in South Carolina and the oldest intact bridge remaining (1820).

The first one we stopped at was Campbell's Covered Bridge.  There has been a few improvements to the area around the bridge, a few picnic tables, a walking trail, and some wood fencing near the bridge.  Here are a few pictures we took:

Interior of the covered bridge


Looking upstream. Streambed is all bedrock.


me


Marker



Structure Diagram & Description





It was pretty neat to see this.  I will have to do some research and see if there is anything similar in and around Johnston County.


The Poinsett Bridge (a very cool Youtube video about the bridge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMIXzFnpOhI)


The pictures....













3 comments:

skiffrun said...

OMG! A post!

Very nice pics.

But . . . I'm confused. Those clothes you're wearing . . . those don't seem to be your usual cycling attire.

So . . . I guess the bridges trip was a sight-seeing adventure . . . not a cycling adventure.

---M

wolfpack said...

oh hush you! yes, it's a post. :p

No, this was not a cycling adventure, but rather an Adventure in Flying...lemme go make a short addenum to my post about that...

2whls3spds said...

Next time ride Amtrak... not really any faster but a lot less frustrating. My rule of thumb is anything under 6 hours by car=Drive. Flying is such a PITA.

BTW excellent pictures of the bridge. The Greenville area is one of my favorite places to ride in SC.

Aaron