USS Alabama Memorial Park

3/8/2020 Elevation 141. Sunny 66 but it feels much warmer.

After our 3 nights we pulled out of Panaces RV park around 10:00 this morning for our 102 mile drive. The time change really helped me out on not leaving too early but then a few miles down the road and we were in another time zone, changed us back to where we were at, so leaving late was a wash. Not wanting to arrive to early at the next campground we hung out in a Pilot Fuel Station, once we hit  I-10 for a while.

Lisa this is just for you:) Todays drive was mostly 2 lane through prime bigfoot habitat, Mary said I’ll show you how to find Bigfoot.  She uses gorilla tape and tapes her banjo up on the front dash, snatches up her copy of “Serenading Bigfoot for Dummies” book from beside her co-piolits chair, the book was left from the previous owners. She starts picking the banjo with her toes. Well now let me tell you, she’d read a couple of paragraphs in the book, start plucking that banjo with her toes, close her eye and lean her head back and, she called it singing, not me, it sounded more like somebody scratching their fingernails down a chalkboard, hoooo, it was bad!! Even with my earplugs in I thought my ears might start bleeding anytime. I still shudder every time I think about it.

Anyways, she wasn’t able to entice a single Bigfoot to come out from hiding.

I’m pretty sure it was because they heard her and started running in the opposite direction I know I sure wanted to.

You know how some people are grounded in reality? Well, reality is scary stuff I prefer to insualte myself from reality, Mary says that I’m well insulated from reality:)

We also drove through miles and miles of destruction caused by hurricane Michael back in 2018. Sadly, the clean up will be going on for years and years to come.

We’ve have officially started traveling a westerly direction today, we’re heading west on I-10 towards New Orleans, some where around there we’ll hang a right, turn north to make our way back to the New Albany IN area for Dr. visits starting the last week in March.

This river was well out of it’s banks. Lately, anytime I check the weather along out route I always get a river flood warning.

You can’t quit reading now because there’s more words below:)

3/9/2020

After spending 1 night at Hitchen Post in Cottondale FL, we’re back in Payne RV park in Theodore Alabama, barely. We stayed here on our way to Florida and this is where we stayed when we toured Daulphine Island.

Our 188 mile expressway drive was almost cut really short. We’re crusing west bound down I-10, not a lot of traffic on the road I was running around 60, this semi passes us, now most of these guys are very professional, know what they are doing, pulling well forward before moving back into the slow lane. This (insert descriptive bad words of choice) truck starts moving into my lane before his trailer tires were past me, I eased over a bit thinking that he was just to lazy to move fully into the fast lane, happens a LOT. Anyway that was not the case the trailer just keeps coming, If I didn’t back off the speed and moved over more, he would have clipped us good………… that would have not been good by the way. Other than that the drive was pretty uneventful. However, I will admit to not really liking the very skinny George Wallace Tunnel, that wasn’t really fun either.

The picture of the semi is the one that almost ruined my day.

And yes, of course there’s more gooooooo below.

3/10/2020

We toured the USS Alabama ( https://www.ussalabama.com ) this morning, the website said to plan on around 2.5 hours, that might be a might conservative if you take your time and really look around, the ship, sub, air planes, tanks and other memorials like one for the Korean and Vietnam Wars. By the way comfortable walking shoes are highly recommended, lots of walking and lots of steps going up and down these skinny steps/ladders, most were easier to go down backwards more like a ladder.

It’s a self guided tour which is fine but when we were there, the arrows to follow started off great, later on I was scouting a head looking for next arrows, some were obvisually missing and by then we had come upon a couple that were really turned around.

Guns bristling from the Alabama everywhere, dang thing kinda looked like a porcupine.

By the way if your touring the submarine, it is just a skinny isle with different bulkhead doors that you need to finagle a way through, and you hear about 15-30 high school kids start yelling 15 minutes until the bus leaves, it’s probably best to find a wider spot and let them by, I’m just saying.

It’s also probably a good idea to check the charge on your camera battery before heading to the Memorial, enough said about that.

More words and goo below.

USS Alabama more words below

USS Drum more words below

Other stuff at the Memorial more words below.

After the tour we stopped at Dick Russell’s Bar-B-Q, the place was packed and the food was good, they set our 3rd drink on the table just as we asked for go boxes, we’ll each have 2 more meals out of the go boxes, they also brought go cups for our drinks. What I thought was interesting as we were leaving it smelled so good outside that I wanted to turnaround and go back for more even thought I was already full.

Ok you can quit reading now, this is the end of this one. And no I didn’t try the last picture. Also check out https://rmtravels.smugmug.com for many more pictures.