Mad County Wine

The other day, as Benno was piling up a dinner platter with a heap of scrumptiously looking and delicious smelling cuts of barbecued pork loins that he had just grilled, I put one piece aside to give to our neighbor, Michael, to taste.  Michael’s newly bestowed BBQ had already passed the test of 4 grilled quarter pounders for his lite lunch earlier that day but I thought a guy like him could still use some extra nourishment.

Not long after we’d eaten we heard a knock on our door. Michael returned the now empty plate and said that he told his girlfriend (a nurse) of his new BBQ and that the difference from his old one to this was like moving up from an old “Hyundai Pony to a Mercedes Benz.” In appreciation for our gesture he brought us a Huckleberry Wine made right here in Alabama. 

Of course we just had to open the jar right away to have a sip and to savor this wine. I’ve never drank anything like this and by looking at the label with its description of 20% alcohol content it should have been an indication of what to expect. Thankfully we had full tummies after our dinner because after I swallowed a mouthful I thought it would knock me off my feet.  If you’ve ever visited a distillery you know they give you samples of the pure stuff and that is very similar as to this wine.  Good wine for sure, but stiff with a lot of zing I need to dilute it with some ice cubes, perhaps.

Later on my curiosity brought me to the website of the Mad County Winery and the story of how their fruit wines evolved. They do admit though that the wines are “Not for the weak or timid.”  I have included the link to their "story" if you are interested. It’s a good read.

Yesterday morning was a very mild day but with an overcast sky. Never the less we though we take a trip into Foley to visit the Railroad Museum and perhaps swing by the Alligator Farm as well.  As it turned out, the museum is closed on Sundays so we only walked around the area and took photos of the parked locomotive and its couple of wagons with their last red one being that of the caboose with it’s cupola.  At the back of the old station museum was a replica of the train, which would be a delight to look at for our grandkids.

We will be going back on another day to pay a visit to the museum and its model train exhibits. 

As it turned out our visit to see the Alligators being fed wasn’t of good timing either. We arrived just shortly after the first feeding time and decided to come back later in the day for another feeding show. 

Unfortunately a short while later the sky really darkened up. The following downpour was so enormous that we fled into the legendary Foley Flea Market building to escape those floods and to browse the massive collection of antiques.  Nothing we needed though.

To return to the Alligator farm we put off for a nice and sunny day. However, there were cattle and a donkey next to the fenced-in Alligator compound and those creatures didn’t mind to pose for a picture.

Today it is quite breezy and much cooler than yesterday. I think we will enjoy reading our books today and to stay put. Hoping you all had a good day and I am looking forward of meeting you here again.

A mystery of missing comments

Today I am writing about a couple of problems that have been bothering me. It has to do with the “Blogger” websites and perhaps Google+ and maybe someone else has had the same trouble.

I have been noticing that when I am going to log out of my “Blogger” account I had to click the “sign out” button several times before I was really signed out. That was new to me and I tried to figure out why that was.

But the other issue that has been troubling me the most was that several comments I made on other people’s “Blogger” websites just disappeared. I mean I wrote a few sentences in the provided comment block, posted them and got the replay: “Your comment was published” only to find out later, maybe the next day or so, that my comment was NOT there.  It had vanished. (I presume it was not intentionally deleted)

Yesterday I went onto the Blogger Help Forum to see if anyone could shed some light onto these happenings.

I did get a reply and the mysterious problem of multiple logouts I have been experiencing was explained following in my abbreviated version like this:

Blogger provides multiple connection points (‘nodes”) to their databases, through the Blogger/Google Content Distribution Network (“CDN”), in many different cities worldwide.

Generally, a blog owner will connect to Blogger, using the closest CDN node. Thanks to Internet Protocol networking with Multipath Routing, the “closest” node won’t always be the node with the least geographical distance from the owner. So when I log out from Blogger, while being connected to one node, the Blogger database in other nodes won’t always be updated immediately, to reflect the log out status. There will always be some delay between updates.

This made sense to me while we are presently in the RV Park connected to their wifi via our secured router.

Now, my other issue with the missing comments is not so easily explained and remains unsolved for the moment.

One of the possible causes suggested are: Harsh though this may be, my comments are treated as spam by Blogger.

Who, Me?  I don’t Spam

I am, and probably you too, have been trusting on blog obscurity verification and Google authentication to restrict commenters from spamming. Maybe Blogger has a filtering problem?

So, out of curiosity, I went into my “Bloggers” Comment section and sub menu “Spam” in there, I found a very nice comment made to one of my posts from an anonymous person. It had ended up in my “Spam Folder”.  I didn’t do that!

Maybe if my fellow bloggers would be kind enough to check their “Spam Folders” perhaps that is where I am buried.

This post might not have been to everyones liking or cup of tea, but "Bloggers" might help other "Bloggers".  Feel free to comment ;-)

I leave you now with a few pictures of the Hilltop RV Park.

The last parked RV next to the wilderness park made himself a little garden

with a fairy house

It has to rain sometime

This morning it rained here in Robertsdale. Boohoo, but no matter there is always something we can do regardless of the weather. My hubby decided he needed to go out in the pouring rain to soap up our truck, because the accumulated pine tree pollens stick to the paint and that can be a nuisance to remove.  He was determined and would not listen no matter what I said to change his mind and to wait until the rain would lessen up. Thank goodness he hurried through that task but he still looked pretty drenched when he came back in. I just shook my head although I have to admit the rain finished the job of rinsing the gum off and the truck is now shiny again.

All shiny again

At home we use our fair size barbecue quite often but it is way too big to travel with us. Our little stainless steel barbecue, which we had bought for our Diesel Duck trawler in Sint Maarten, a Caribbean Island, and taken with us when the boat was sold, was moved again to travel with us in our travel trailers. It had served us well over the years but it was time to move up and to treat us to a newer and little more spacious and updated model. Most of you travelers know of or own a Weber BBQ and they are pretty reliable and produce good heat. We knew our next BBQ purchase would be a Weber product and that is what we got. It arrived yesterday afternoon and a couple of hours later we enjoyed our first T-bone steaks grilled on this new BBQ. In storage there are a few of the mini propane bottles left which are going to be used up before our 20 pound gas bottles come into action. A 4 ft extension LPG hose and a milk crate to store the 20-pound tank are as well in our inventory.

The new BBQ

 Yep! Our stainless Marine BBQ found a new happy owner. Michael, our next-door neighbor, an ex army Special Forces member, happily took it. When we got here, I asked Benno if he knew whom our neighbor was. He said, “You don’t mess with that guy, he is big and all muscle.” Michael is now a special operations contractor and all his work is overseas. When he finally comes home he slabs a couple of steaks on his BBQ, downs a few cold ones and sleeps for a couple of days. Otherwise, he is pretty tight lipped about his work and didn’t want his picture taken. As I observed Michael a couple days ago squeezing two steaks onto his BBQ for his supper I guessed that this relic of a BBQ must have seen a few missions and was ready to retire.

Michaels's new stainless steel BBQ

Michael's old BBQ

Michael's nest

On another subject I am surprised that there is still no consideration here about reducing recyclable items. The stores, especially the grocery stores, are very generous with their plastic shopping bags when we shop. Back in Canada we are encouraged to bring our own bags, boxes or other means of transporting the groceries home unless we want to pay for the plastic bags the stores provide. So frugal as I am, I am using those grocery plastic bags we get here while shopping for my trash.  I prefer to dispose of it every day instead of accumulating it and those bags seem to be just the right size.  Faced with a bundle of plastic I needed to tame inside my cupboard, I resorted to an empty tissue box to insert triple folded bags, layer upon layer. Can you guess how many folded bags fit into an empty tissue box? Once you press the air out of them and lay them flat there is room for 100 bags! I wont be here long enough to use them all up ;-)

I used a standard Kleenex box

Tonights sunset

Thank you all for visiting. Come again and comments are appreciated.

Blue sky and warm sunshine, it can’t get any better than that

What can I say it’s been great so far here in Robertsdale, Alabama where daytime temperatures have just been perfect for us with plenty of sunshine but not too hot so that we don’t have to run the air and open windows are enough to keep us cool. Other than a couple of shopping trips we’ve been hanging around the travel trailer.  Yesterday Benno gave the truck a good wash because it needed it.  Morning dew mixed with airborne pollen from the surrounding trees of the RV Park and some road dust had caked enough grime on the red paint of the truck that it was high time to get the dirt off before someone would write on it “wash me”.

In town we were trying to hunt down Benno’s favorite “Chicago Hard Rolls” which are small buns that taste like a French Baguette, but the store we bought them last is going to discontinue baking them. Too bad. However, we were successful in bringing home the new coffeemaker. This one is made by “Krups” and hopefully will live longer than its predecessor. It has passed our test of a decent cup of coffee and we gave it thumbs up. After all, the output can only be as good as the quality of product you put into it.

Here in the States mail is also delivered on Saturdays, which is not the case in Canada and today we got a parcel from Amazon. It had been a wish of mine to get a set of Walky-Talkies, also called two-way radios and as it is so often the case they are better priced here than back home. With the increased amount of smart phones these days those radios are not as popular as they once were. However, they do not require cell service and have a 30-mile radius depending on the terrain as the package claims (maybe it's just a good sales pitch). We’d like to use them back home to communicate from Benno’s shed to the house, while biking, hiking or when we are walking the dogs. There are many uses, I guess, and we only own one cell phone. The rechargeable lithium batteries are supposed to last 12 hours of operation time.

Several times during the day our dogs get to go for walks or rather they take us for walks ;-)  It’s good for all of us and they are totally spoiled to get their wish every time they beg for it. Their favorite walk is in the woods behind the RV Park. It leads to adjacent grazing fields for horses. Those horses come to the fence to look at our dogs and perhaps for handouts and the dogs are totally excited to see these huge creatures. I don’t know much about horses but these seem very nice and good-natured.  By the way, there are several Dachshunds in this RV Park and a lot of woofs and tail wagging’s are going on between them when they say hello to each other on their walks.

That’s it from me today. Hope everyone had a good day as well.