Last Day In Athens . . .
Today was our last full day here in Athens so we headed over to Huntsville for lunch and a Costco stop.
I knew that I was going to need gas before we leave here tomorrow, so I had been checking prices around Athens, with the cheapest being $4.22 at the local WalMart, with the highest being $4.49 at a number of places.
So I was interested to see if it was any better in Huntsville. And it wasn’t.
At first.
Every station we passed was higher than the ones in Athens, until we passed the Sam’s Club, which was $4.13. So I decided to stop there on the way back by. But when we got to the Costco, I found them matching Sam’s cost, so I filled up there.
Finishing up at Costco, and heading back toward Athens, we made our lunch stop at Rosie’s Cantina, a really great Mexican place where we’ve eaten for years. And it’s always delicious. Kind of reminds me of a Ninfa’s back in Houston,
Jan had a Chile Relleno with rice and beans,
while I tried their Beef and Spicy Sausage Fajitas with Charro Beans.
Really great as always, and enough leftover for a light dinner tonight.
Tomorrow we’re back on the road again, driving about a 100 miles south to Birmingham.
Gator Bait
May 31, 2009
Breakfast Buffet & A Lot of Gators…
Today we headed out about 9:30 am to have the breakfast buffet at Whistle Junction where we had lunch with Carol and Joe on Friday.
Then it was off to Jungle Adventures Nature Park, about 15 west of Titusville, on the way to Orlando.
Although we haven’t been here since 1997, we looked forward to going back.
Jungle Adventures Nature Park
A Sweet Mouthful !!
They have a lot of animals here – Florida panthers, deer, coatamundis, lemurs, bears, spiders, lizards, scorpions, turtles, tortoises, and of course, hundreds of alligators, crocodiles, and caymans.
Is It Dinner Time Yet?
Just a Big Putty Tat!
The trainer said he had raised this panther since he was about 3 weeks old. The cat came up and started rubbing his head all over the trainer, marking him as his property.
Duckweed-covered Gator
Feeding Time
Feeding Time Too
They sell you hotdogs to feed the baby gators. I just want to be sure they can tell the difference between the hot dogs and fingers.
Hot Dogs or Fingers!
Jan makes a new friend.
Jan Makes a New Friend!
It’s hard to say who’s scaring who here.
Who’s scaring who here?
Jan wouldn’t hold this one!
A Real Handful!
We headed back to the coach about 2:30 pm after a great time.
A complete change of subject here. Jan and I are big Ice Road Truckers fans. That’s the show on the History Channel that depicts the truck drivers driving supplies into northern Canada mining camps and oil exploration sites on ice roads that only exist in the wintertime.
During the rest of the year, the road isn’t there. It’s open water!
Anyway, on tonight’s 3rd season premiere episode, we were surprised to see that instead of running in Canada this year, they’re running the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks, AK to Prudhoe Bay.
We’ve been on this road. Or at least part of it. We took a tour that takes you from Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle, a trip of almost 200 miles. But this is not your average 200-mile trip.
Because of the bad roads and the hilly, curvy terrain, it takes about 16 hours roundtrip. You leave at 6:30 am and return around 10:30 pm.
You stop for lunch going up and dinner coming back at the same place, the Yukon River Camp at the Yukon River Crossing.
Yukon River Camp
Yukon River Crossing
Surprising the food was very, very good. They bring a chef up from the Lower 48 every year to work the season.
The Dalton Highway was built to support the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the pipeline parallels the highway for a good part of the way.
Yukon Pipeline
They have a marker at the Arctic Circle to get your picture taken.
The Arctic Circle
This is Jan and I with our granddaughter Piper when she came up to visit us in Fairbanks last July.
At least when we did this trip it was in the summer, and not in January.
Anyway, the show is bringing back a lot of great memories.
It’s A Magazine, Not A Clip!
May 31, 2014
Crime Doesn’t Pay . . .
Today was going to be a daytrip day so I was up about 8:45, too early, since I didn’t get to sleep until about 3am.
Our first stop was the Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond, IN.
Besides being a very nice Welcome Center, its real claim to fame is the fact that it houses the John Dillinger Museum. You’ve gotta like a place whose motto is “Crime Doesn’t Pay…But It Does Charge Admission”.
They have a really amazing amount of Dillinger memorabilia, including the wooden gun he carved from a broomstick for an earlier jail escape, and the pants he was wearing when he was killed.
He was killed in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago after being ‘fingered’ by Anna Sage, the infamous ‘Lady in Red’. In reality, she actually wore an orange dress, but I guess ‘Lady in Orange’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
This is an example of Dillinger’s favorite escape vehicle, a 1933 Essex Terraplane 8, renowned for its power and speed.
They also had a very nice display of the many types of weapons that Dillinger and his gang liked to use.
Like Willie Sutton, the famous bank robber, who really did not say “I rob banks because that’s where the money is”, Dillinger and his cohorts DID rob police stations because that’s where the guns were.
One of his real favorites was the .45 cal Thompson Submachine Gun, as displayed 2nd and 3rd from the top in this photo.
Strangely enough, it’s also Jan’s weapon of choice as well.
Though Jan prefers the magazine-fed model, rather than the drum-fed, because it’s less likely to jam.
And while we’re being picky, this is not a Thompson ‘clip’. It is a Thompson Drum Magazine. Unclear about the difference between a Magazine and a Clip? This should make it clear.
But for what it’s worth, Willie Sutton also carried a Thompson on many of his bank robberies, because he said, “You can’t rob a bank on charm and personality,”
He further said that none of his weapons were ever loaded because “somebody might get hurt.”
Leaving the Welcome Center, we headed east to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Welcome Center to get our National Park Passports stamped and to look around.
About 5pm we headed back to Elkhart and had dinner once again at King Wha, a really good Chinese place. I’m gradually working my way up their hot sauce scale. This time they used two extra hot sauce amounts when cooking my Hunan Chicken. Next time I’m going for three.
Either they’ll run out of hot sauce, or my head will explode. We’ll see which one comes first.
I Never Did Learn
May 31, 2019
Bowing To The Inevitable . . .
This is one of those blogs that results from the intersection of several recent events – Our recent time in London, and President Trump’s upcoming visit there.
The subject is bowing.
There’s been several articles about whether President Trump will/should bow to the Queen. For the record, he shouldn’t and won’t. And neither will the First Lady.
To start with, our President doesn’t defer to any other leader, and we’re no longer British subjects, anyway. There was that little dustup back in the late-1700’s that took care of that.
Last week as we were passing Buckingham Place, we saw a lot of fancy-dressed women wearing big hats, getting out of limos, and Jan wondered if Sam was among them.
I’ve talked about Sam, though not by name, a couple of years ago in a long blog post called The Pixelization Of Memory. This part is about halfway down.
The whole idea started when we were visiting my old hometown in north Alabama a few years ago, and I mentioned to Jan, that I had been checking out people around us, wondering if I would run into one of the several old girlfriends that I had back then. But as I told Jan, I realized that I was looking for them like they looked back when they were 16 or so, not in their 60’s like they are now.
And that’s why Jan brought up Sam as we passed Buckingham Palace.
It all started here.
Beginning when I was 13 we lived in South America for a couple of years, mostly staying at a large old hotel that had both nightly guests, and also residents like us.
Turns out there was a very cute British girl, about 14, also living there. Soft red, curly hair and bright green eyes. Since we were the only English-speaking kids our age around, we naturally ended up hanging out together. She told me her name was Sam (Samantha) and that her father worked for the British government.
After we had been together for a month or so, one day she showed up to where we usually met on the large landscaped grounds, all dressed up for a party, frilly dress, hair piled up on her head, the works. A big change from the shorts and T-shirts she usually wore.
She told me her mother wanted to meet me for afternoon tea at 4pm. Told me in no uncertain terms that I was to dress nice, wear long pants and a nice shirt, and comb my hair. (Yes, I had hair back then)
And “DON’T BE LATE!”
As she left, I ask what suite she was in, and she said, “6th floor”. And when I ask what room, she smiled slightly, and said, “You’ll figure it out.” And I did.
When I got off the elevator, there was no hallway, just a vestibule and a set of ornate double doors with a pull rope for a doorbell.
A few seconds after I rang the bell, there stood a butler in full regalia, but young and very fit looking, and about 6’6” tall. Looking down at me, he said, “Ah, Master Gregory, right on time, thank you.”
Then, after he closed the door behind me, he said, “Please follow me. The DUCHESS and LADY Samantha are in the library.”
Wait, What?
When I followed Andrews into the library, I found Sam standing behind her mother who was sitting at a writing desk. And I could tell from the look on her face that she was terrified that I was going to screw this up. And knowing me, she had good reason to worry.
After Andrews introduce me, I blurted out, “I’ve never met a Duchess before. Am I supposed to bow, or curtsy?”
Sam blanched white as the proverbial sheet.
The Duchess looked at me very seriously, and said, “In this informal situation, neither is required. Then with a big smile she said, “But I would like to see your curtsy sometime.”
With that the ice was broken, and Sam started breathing again.
After that I was regularly invited for tea. The only time the Duchess ever got mad at me was when I made the mistake of referring to Sam as ‘Sam’ instead of Samantha in front of her.
Her eyes flashed and her voice got cold as she said, “Sa Man Tha”
Turns out that Sam’s stepfather was Consul General, and Sam would inherit her mother’s title someday, a title that had been in the family since the mid-1600’s. And with that title came, not one, not two, but three ancestral estates. But as Sam said, “Only one is really a castle.”
And if that’s not bad enough, it turned out that both Samantha and her mother were actually royalty, and in line for the throne, though in the double-digits position.
So, was Sam among those limo passengers at Buckingham? I’ll never know, and I don’t want to know. I prefer to remember her when she was 14.
And I never did learn how to curtsy . . . or bow.
Thought For The Day:
Apparently Yogi was wandering around Daytona Beach, FL looking for Boo Boo and his Pic-A-Nic basket, but decided to take a short nap in a hammock in someone’s yard.
Those short naps are so refreshing.
.
