Sunday at the Farm

We were up early this morning to head into Walla Walla to go to the Chapel on the Wainwright Veterans Administration Hospital grounds. Sherry's husband Stroh was a World War II vet who used VA services. Sherry has continued to attend services at the Chapel after Stroh's passage. We like to go with her whenever we are in this area.

Today was a special day as this week is Chaplain Ben's 91st birthday! Ben is the most incredible person. He always has the most interesting and thoughtful sermons. He would be amazing even if he were twenty years younger! Sherry had made caramel corn for after the service. Others brought cupcakes and cookies to help with the celebration.

We got a glimpse of the new hospital that is being built to replace this very old facility. It looks like it is really nice and is so needed!

We've spent a lazy afternoon reading the papers, grooming the dogs, and watching Mariners and Seahawks games. It's a good day when both of your teams win!

Sherry and I sat outside with the mastiffs a good share of the afternoon until it started to drip. We actually got a pretty nice rain for a while. From the sound of things, it's going to be a pretty wet week throughout the Northwest.

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 --

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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!