Finally, FLORIDA!

This morning we left Styx River RV Park in Alabama to head for Florida. I picked up my Mother's Day lavender plant (a present from Granddaughter Claire) that sits by the front door of Auntie Violet when we are parked. As I was getting ready to put it on the floor in the front seat of Toad, I noticed movement. At first I thought it was another leaf. Can you spot what I found?

It was a pretty straight shot east on Interstate 10 into Florida. I-10 is a four-lane highway in very good shape. We only ran into one small slow stretch of bridge construction. (It is very unusual not to run into a GREAT deal of construction!) We stopped at the Florida Welcome Center and picked up a couple of maps and a whole passel of brochures. We are planning to be in Florida for a couple of months, so we should find lots to explore.

We turned off on State Highway 231 and headed south about fourteen miles to Pine Lake RV Park. This is one of the parks affiliated with our Resort Parks International membership, so we are staying here for a week at $15 per night for a 50 amp site.

Before we left this morning, I sat down and wrote out several checks for our annual insurance fees (the bills came in that batch of mail yesterday...). We'll have to make a run into town and the post office in the morning.

We're In the Bible Belt!

 It's the first week in December, and there are still flowers in bloom!

The row of azaleas was probably prettier before the rain today knocked so many of the blossoms off --

Without a doubt we are in the so-called "Bible Belt" of the United States. Or maybe it should be called the Church Belt... Or maybe the belt of churches with unusual names. These are just some of the ones we saw today when we drove to Robertsdale to get our mail:

     * Church of God of Prophecy
     * Bible Deliverance Church
     * Harvest Church
     * Liberty Church
     * Abiding Love Fellowship
     * New Covenant Church
     * Lifepoint Church
     * Bible Way Assembly
     * The Dwelling Place
     * Church of the Harvesters
     * House of Prayer
     * God's Place
     * Church of the Celebration

In addition to these, we saw two Churches of God; three Churches of Christ; two Catholic Churches complete with attached schools; one Greek Orthodox Church; three United Methodist Churches; half a dozen Community Churches; and at least twenty Baptist churches! And that was in a thirty-five mile or so drive.

We mailed our stack of Christmas letters today and I sent a digital meat thermometer to Son Sean as well .(I realized when he was talking about his Thanksgiving turkey that he didn't have one!) We had two packages waiting for us at General Delivery. One was a packed box of our forwarded mail from Daughter MM. The other was a wonderful box from Sister Sherry. She had sent four kinds of homemade chutney -- two different kinds of apricot, one of cranberry and one curried apple; two different kinds of pepper jelly and one jar of quince jelly. There were two jars of ground pepper flakes -- one of which is Brother Pat's VERY HOT batch (I'll definitely be sharing that one with our friends Tom and Juni.). But the very best part was a plastic box filled with a variety of her homemade biscotti! You can bet I will be rationing those to have with my evening cup of decaf coffee.

While we were out and about this afternoon, we went looking for an Alabama key chain for Granddaughter Havela's collection. We realized that we had been in this state for two weeks and hadn't yet found one for her. After fruitlessly checking several stores, we finally stopped at a Love's Truck Stop. We should have gone to a truck stop in the first place -- they had a whole bunch of them.

Fort Morgan, Alabama

Fort Morgan sits on the westernmost tip of the peninsula that encloses the bottom portion of Mobile Bay in Alabama. Mobile Bay is on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. The fort was completed following the War of 1812 when Congress realized how vulnerable the US coastlines were. This building was built to house the Fort Morgan Museum after the fort was deactivated and turned over to the State of Alabama.

The brick fortifications were mostly destroyed during the Civil War by rifled cannon and steam-powered warships. This was pretty much proven in 1864 when Admiral D.G. Farragut led his fleet past the guns of the fort into Mobile Bay with the loss of only one ship. (This was when he gave his famous order, "Damn the torpedoes (mines), full speed ahead!") That ship, the ironclad Tecumseh, was struck by a exploding mine (then called torpedoes) and sunk within a minute thus disproving the view that the ironclads were invincible...

Concrete batteries were built following the Civil War from 1896 to 1905. These batteries were manned during the Spanish-American War and World War I.

Some of the powder magazines below the gun batteries still exist --

 Fort Morgan was mainly used as a training base during the World War I. It was deactivated and put into caretaker status in 1923; then reactivated and manned in 1941. In 1946 it was again deactivated and turned over to the State of Alabama.
 

Looking out over Mobile Bay from the top of one of the batteries --

There are a lot of what we assumed were oil platforms and other rigs in the Bay --

The last time we drove along the Gulf Coast a year or so after Katrina, there wasn't much left of any of the beach houses except for some of the pillars they had been built on. The trees that were left were mostly broken and bare. Some of the shoreline still looks that way --

.

But most of it is once again built up with beach houses that look like pastel confections --

 

I think that there must be a rule that says your vacation home must be painted a color that looks edible!

A VERY, VERY, Rainy Day

It rained hard during the night; then this morning, it POURED! And then it poured some more! We had planned to head down to the western most portion of Alabama on Mobile Bay today to Fort Morgan, but it was way too wet outside!

About three-thirty or so the rain slacked off so we were able to go for a short walk around the RV park. There are probably thirty or so of these little rental cabins scattered around the park. Most of them seemed to be occupied this holiday weekend.

I've seen lots of these pyracantha bushes around the property --

I love the red berries!

It was so wet and nasty out today, even the vultures weren't flying..

As we walked back towards Auntie Violet, the clouds lightened up  and we could see some blue sky

through the trees. The remaining clouds were turned golden by the setting sun --

Unfortunately, the break in the clouds did not last and tonight it is again intermittently raining hard. The weather channel shows the storm heading northeast and out to sea. It can hurry up and do it as far as I am concerned!

The River Styx

"Charon, in Greek mythology, is the ferryman of the dead. The souls of the deceased are brought to him by Hermes, and Charon ferries them across the River Styx. He only accepts the dead which are buried or burned with the proper rites, and if they pay him an coin for their passage. For that reason a corpse had always a coin placed under the tongue.

Those who cannot afford the passage, or are not admitted by Charon, are doomed to wander on the banks of the Styx for a hundred years."

When we first were looking for RV Resorts in Alabama, I had to laugh when we found that the one we were making reservations at was the River Styx Resort. When I told Forry the story of the old Greek myth, he got a chuckle out of it as well. Today we took a walk down this old stairway to visit the River Styx --

Coming down the bank, you could glimpse it between the trees --

There were lots of fallen tree branches and sand bars in the quiet stream. (We looked, but never saw Charon...or even his ferry...)

 One of the trees we saw along the stream bed on our hike was this holly tree --

As well as many palmettos --

And as it started to get dark, the buzzards returned, heading for their roosts --

Other than our walk to the river, we spent a fairly quiet day. I washed all of the dish towels and clothes that I managed to use yesterday as well as a load of shirts. Forry drained the grey water and added water to the batteries. I hadn't made a great deal of food yesterday, but we did finish off what leftovers there were.

The Day Before Thanksgiving...

And all through the house --

The roasting chicken is thawing in the refrigerator (even the little turkeys were all so big!),
The pecan pie ($8.84 for enough pecan halves for a pie!) is cooling on the counter,
The crab cocktail (a VERY small batch!) is mellowing its flavors in the fridge as well,
The celery and onions for the dressing are chopped,
The bread for the dressing is torn into pieces,
Butter for the bird -- and other things -- is out on the counter.

Not a whole lot more I can do today!

As I anticipated last night, we slept in this morning, only getting up in time to watch The View. We were relaxing last night watching the finals of Dancing With the Stars (Yeah, JR won!), when the Severe Weather Alarm went off on the NOAA weather radio! Nothing like its "BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP!" to get your attention. We were right in the path of a raging thunderstorm that swept through the Gulf Coast area of Alabama! It POURED rain, accented with bolts of lightning and booms of thunder right over the top of us!

Fortunately, the storm only lasted a couple of hours and we were finally able to see a star or two in the night sky. After it passed, it was MUGGY and still hot. With the bedroom windows open, we were finally able to get to sleep.

Mississippi, Louisiana, Mississippi, ALABAMA!

We got an early start this morning (even for us), leaving Movietown RV Park in Canton and heading south on Interstate 65. Our GPS Sally really wanted us to go east on I-20 and argued with us almost half the way -- she so wanted us to cut across to the other side of the state and go down I-69!

This is a small portion of the VERY large automobile factory just outside of Canton. Opened up just a few years ago, it has a great deal to do with the improved economy in this part of Mississippi --

The Nissan factory covers acres of property and is its own small town --

It was an overcast day. We had an occasional drizzle, but seemed to be running just behind the real rain storm. There was lots of water on the road being sprayed up by the trucks. As we left the North Delta area of  Mississippi, we were no longer in farmland, but in the pine barrens.

We drove south through Mississippi and into Louisiana, driving north of Lake Pontchartrain on I-12 until it changed into I-10 and took us back through the 'heel' of Mississippi along the Gulf Coast. What a different looking route it was from the first time we had driven it following Katrina. You have to really look to see some of the broken-off trees still visible amongst the greenery. It felt sort of funny to see the sign pointing towards Pass Christian, which was where our folks from Menno did our first service with Mennonite Disaster Service following the hurricanes.

It was a l-o-n-g day, we had driven twice as far as we normally do when we finally crossed into Alabama. It was another fifty-three miles, close to four-thirty and almost dark when we found our site at Styx River RV Park. I don't think anyone will be getting up very early tomorrow.

Two States -- To Get Groceries?!

This morning we watched Juni and Tom go down the road --

and leave the RV Park here in Tunica are their way to Red Bay, Alabama and the Allegro Bay factory where they are going to have some warranty work done.

We were out of orange juice, so went into the Piggly-Wiggly in Tunica. I wanted to re-stock some staples for the kitchen as well as pick up a few things for next week. The prices were extremely high; the vegetables all looked wilted; and the meat department area smelled bad. I decided that I'd much drive the extra twenty miles to the Krogers that the GPS had shown.

I always forget that the GPS shows mileage as the crow flies... It was more like 30-35 miles! It was a nice drive through what they call the North Delta country. We saw this line-up of what looked like round bales.  But, when we got closer, we realized

that they were actually tightly packed bales of cotton. Quite a bit different looking then the boxcar-sized rectangles of cotton we saw in fields in Arizona last winter.

Not much later we found ourselves crossing this narrow two-lane bridge over the mighty Mississippi River into the State of Arkansas. The store in Helena, Arkansas that the GPS said was a Kroger, no longer was. It still wasn't great, but it was a lot better than the one in Tunica.

We got back to Mid-South RV Park just as the sun was setting --

These first two pictures were taken facing east --

While this one was towards the west --

Sunsets in Mississippi are gorgeous!

An Aborted Tour

We took off after lunch to visit the Adena Mansion and Gardens high upon the hill overlooking the Scioto River Valley.  I had checked the website and thought it was open today (closed on Mondays), but when we got there, the sign said "Closed on Mondays AND Tuesdays." So much for that!

Our drive did take us through some of the older residential sections of Chillicothe.  We saw some gorgeous old houses on our way to Krogers.  We stocked up on groceries at Krogers, then headed back to Auntie Violet for a spaghetti supper.

We've been in touch with our friends Leslie and Bill, who are in Red Bay, Alabama at the Tiffin factory getting some needed repairs done to their coach, Serenity.  They had a pretty long punch list of things to be fixed (they had purchased her used, as is).  I think all of their list has been taken care of, but the factory also had a couple of things to be fixed under warranty.  One of them had to do with the roof -- they are actually cutting the roof loose and replacing a portion of it with aluminum!  Kind of scary to think about.  Evidently they do it one day, then paint it the next.  I almost feel like we should send Serenity a get-well card.

Our friends Tom and Juni are also in the south.  They are in Tennessee visiting Juni's family and will also be heading for Red Bay after Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure when we will cross paths with either set of friends, but since we are slowly but surely heading in a southerly direction it will happen one of these days.