Monday..

Tomorrow we'll head back to Winston Salem, as we need to be to work at 11:30. Right now the local TV stations have interrupted regular programming to track a storm that has produced a tornado warning. It is moving away from us here....it's a severe storm that is producing as many as 194 lightening strikes an hour. We haven't had any heavy rain yet although the warning said we could get some. The worst might be over...at one point three bolts of lightening came down and it looked like a claw scratch across the sky. It was really awesome !

We took a picture of this rig that has been here at the campground for about two weeks. It's a Teton brand 5th wheel and the big truck pulling it has a matching paint job....very pretty. We drove by and stopped to chat with the guy who owns it. He's a fulltimer, originally from Delaware. I asked him if he's had any problems getting parts for his rig, since Teton went out of business and he said no...he can get anything he might need. Only thing that would be a problem would be the fender skirts. Very pretty rig.

Here's one of the ponds at the campground. I took Boomer down there yesterday so he could go swimmin'....it drops off pretty quick so he waded in up to his belly and then turned around to come back to shore. It cooled him off for a little while. Got up to 97 yesterday and 91 today....too darn hot ! I went out around 9 this morning and washed the rig...it getting another rinse off tonight with the storm passing through.

Got a busy week ahead. We have several new residents moving in this week. On Saturday, we have a VA benefit workshop to talk about the Aid and Attendance benefit that many people do not know about. Along with the workshop is a special lunch and entertainment. We have over 30 people signed up to attend the workshop so we'll be looking forward to our day off on Sunday. Hope everyone has a great week !

Hot Stuff...

Last night Linda decided that today we'd go to Avery Island....home of the Tabasco bottling plant. After some puttering around the house this morning, we headed out.

Tugboat hard at work...

As we crossed a bridge that passed over a swamp and then a lake, it seemed that it all ran together. Not sure if it's supposed to look this way or if it has flooded recently... I saw on the news tonight where Texas had some hard rains yesterday and caused some flooding and I know there was a line of storms to the west of us yesterday so perhaps that is what caused all this water. As we pulled up to the little toll shack, at the entrance to Avery Island, we got a good laugh out of this guy when he stretched this pole up to the truck window to get our money. Was a long pole with a clothespin on the end to clip your dollar bill to. Too cute !

We got to the visitor center and the parking lot was really full of cars and two buses along the side. Two bus loads of grade school kids had just gotten there and we could hear their chatter as we entered the lobby of the Tabasco building. We had a little bit of a wait before we could start our tour.

We were struck by what seemed to be a vinegary smell as we entered the building. Good reason for that....Once the peppers are ground into pepper mash, they are then placed in oak barrels that the company acquires from Jack Daniels (the distillery can only use them once and then they must be discarded). What a great way to recycle them. The pepper mash is placed in the barrels and sealed and a thick coating of salt (mined from the salt mines at Avery Island) is placed across the lid. The lids have holes in them so the gases from the fermenting peppers can escape. The salt prevents impurities from entering the barrels. The pepper mash cures in the barrels for three years and then it's opened up and mixed with vinegar and prepared into the famous Tabasco concoction. It mixes for up to 28 days in a vat before it is strained and bottled. These Tabasco folks are great at finding uses for leftover items. The seeds that are strained out of the sauce are sold to various companies that make gum and toothpaste...guess it gives them a little "zip". The barrels are reused and have a life of 22 - 100 years. Once they start to fall apart, the barrels are busted up and sold to be used in smokers (what an intense flavor that must be after having pepper mash in them for up to 100 years). After touring the plant we went over to the country store...
There we sampled many of the different flavors of sauce that Tabasco makes...I liked the sweet and spicy one the best. The others were too hot for me. We also tried the sweet and spicy ice cream....that was yummy ! It was sneaky ice cream....you'd take a bite and about a minute later you'd feel that "bite" in the back of your throat....very sneaky. By the time we got to the store all of the little kids had made it over there and were trying to find things to spend their money on...it was a zoo ! We looked around briefly and then got out of there.
On the way down I had seen this place and we decided to eat there on the way home... They boasted the "world's best biscuits" so I thought we needed to check them out since I know my mom makes the world's best biscuits. They had three "blue plate specials" for $5.50 so Linda decided to try one. Evidently Linda's taste of chicken the other day made her cross over to the "dark side" as she selected Liver and Onions. She got all of this plus dessert for $5.50. I had a salad with shrimp and fresh sauteed mushrooms on it and it was very good. I had peach cobbler for dessert (asked for something that had their biscuits in it but they didn't have anything like shortcake, etc.)The cobbler was very good though. As we both climbed in the truck, stuffed from the great meal we'd just had, I reminded Linda of the long, bumpy ride back to Baton Rouge ahead of us. For any of you who have traveled I-10 west in Louisiana, the concrete seams are horrendous and we were pounded every mile that we covered. My thought is that there is no way that any of that dessert we ate had any chance of forming into fat cells with all that jiggling on the ride home..... That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Ready to Rumble...

It's 3:38 p.m. and it's getting really dark outside....We are under a tornado watch and the line of severe weather is almost on top of Baton Rouge. It's starting to rumble outside but the darkness is really eerie. Don't remember it getting this black during the other severe storms we had.

Stuffed a bone for the boys to try and distract them. Ya think that maybe all these storms coming through so often would cure Boomer of his fear of thunderstorms ? If it doesn't cure him it will surely make him a real basket case during these storms. So far the boys are doing OK.. Boomer's not living up to his name....maybe "boom-less" is more like it. When we meet mid-westerners they like his name....they reference the "Sooner" and "Boomer" thing...I didn't know what they were talking about until someone explained it to me but no, he's not named after the rush to get land in the mid-west. It just suited him so that is the name we gave him.

I've wondered, with the frequency of so many severe storms down here, where the safest place would be in the rig if I did have to take cover. Interior room....no such place in an RV. Maybe between the bed and closet with pillows over me ? Probably but doubt it would be of much use if a twister truly did hit us. Although our rig is heavy I don't think it would be heavy enough to withstand the likes of a tornado. Hmm...let's hope we never have to find out. Linda is at work and hopefully she doesn't have a nursing home full of scared people to deal with. This too shall pass....

Here we go again.....

Wow, last night was really wild as far as storms go. Started around 3:30 a.m. with horrendous lightening and thunder. Boomer was really nervous and panicking. As the storm intensified Linda came down to sleep on the couch so the dogs would settle down. I got up and we all took up residence on the couch as the rain pounded down and the lightening was cracking all around us. The storm kept up for quite a while. I think it was around 5:30 when I finally got back to bed.

This morning, on the news, we learned that a twister(or winds of some sort) had touched down in Robertsdale (the next town up from us). A roof collapsed on one house....a gazebo was picked up and scattered across the yard...trees brought down, etc. There was some pretty scary devastation done just a short distance from here. Tonight they are saying it is supposed to be worse than last night, with a chance for large hail (haven't had any of that yet). It has been thundering most of the day with some rain showers this evening but nothing too bad yet. We'll see how the night goes.