Still Traveling, But There’s No Place Like Home

One of the last things we did on Dauphin island was tour the fort that was on its Eastern most end.   This fort was here long before civilization crowded in.  The men had no stores from which to buy their food, so they depended on the oysters, fish and alligators for their meals.  It must have been a long, lonely tour of duty as there was not much to do but guard the coast, eat, sleep and find food each day.   Their sleeping arrangements were not the best either.

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Hopefully feather mattresses were put on these narrow beds.

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Or maybe they just laid down on this and covered up with a thin blanket.

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This must have been an officer’s room as he had the fortune to have a fireplace to keep him warm at night.

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There were many hand written letters home to family and they typed them up so we could read them as many of the words were hard to read and many were misspelled.   Notice this guy received some shirts from his wife, but the wristbands were too tight!  There were many  letters like this and I could have stayed and read them all, but we had more to see.

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Another military man looking at quarters in which he is very happy he was never quartered.   But he had to sleep out in the woods a lot so it wasn’t much better.  He didn’t have to hunt for food, though.

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This is another place I wish we could have stayed longer, but we had a ferry to catch.

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Out to sea.

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Past pelicans and seagulls resting on rocks in the bay.

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Past oil rigs that looked somewhat alien in this scenery.

We were driving to Destin, Florida in hopes of spending a day at the beach before we headed north, but near Fort Walton our car starting bucking like a horse in a rodeo.  It would run well for a while until we stopped at a light and starting up, it would start bucking again.  Thankfully, we made it to our motel without hitting one red light after I said a prayer.   We found a repair shop and took it in.  Of course they could find nothing wrong. “Bring it back in in the morning,” They said so we did. David left the car running so the repairman could witness what was happening.  It was a relatively simple fix, but we missed our beach time. So on north we drove.

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This will mean nothing to anyone but those who attend my church.  Our pastor talks about how he was saved in Piney Grove Baptist Church and wouldn’t you know it. We drove right past it!  I had to get a picture. There was a man there we hoped knew Brother Bailey, but he was just visiting the cemetery there and didn’t know him.

Then we found this wonderful museum of Alabama history.

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I can’t even begin to show you all the pictures I took and how much was in this little museum, but it was wonderful.

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Rooms set up to look like long ago.

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So many antique quilts.  Many I didn’t recognize the pattern.

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Set up for a quilting bee but…..

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The quilters were on break.

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This hat and purse were made from corn husks.

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An old baby bed.  Kept the mosquitoes and flies off baby.

Besides the museum. there were buildings to see.

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A general store that was full of old general store stuff.

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A church heated by an old cast iron stove.

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Lit by kerosene lamps. I told David it would be wonderful to decorate this church for Christmas with a tree and holly and have the lamps lit, the stove heating the room and having a church service at night. It would be magical.

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And Pastor David said, “Yes, that would be nice.”

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There was an old chicken house, but no chickens.

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A covered bridge and several other houses to see.   And then it was time to move on.

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Through more little southern towns with beautiful houses with big front porches.

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Until we came to another town where we found this park.  Another place off the beaten path.  Not a tourist trap, but well worth seeing.

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Over a bridge…

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To a beautiful falls.  It was roaring like Niagra.

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History tells us that an Indian maiden, betrothed to a man she did not want to marry because she was in love with another, jumped to her death at these falls.  No woman should ever have to marry someone she is not madly in love with.

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I would have probably done the same thing if I were being forced to marry someone I did not love.

Back on the road again and what do I see ahead???????

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We passed it, David, go back!

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I can’t believe it. It’s a Haunted Chicken House!  Opens in October.  Road trip!!

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So many cars with chickens on the top.  There was a big building there where the haunted part was, but I was loving seeing all these cars with the chickens.  So funny.   And I can’t even tell you what it’s near so we probably could never find it again.

Many times serendipitous things happen to us. Like when David missed his turn in a town and right at that very moment when he knew he had missed it, we saw to our left a part.  This park had log cabins on its grounds and a walking path.  “Let’s go in!”  And we did.  I walked  and looked at all there was to see.

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A bridge to walk and fountains.

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A log cabin with plaques of “dead mothers,”  There were a lot of them.

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Another old cabin. I love cabins.  I would love to live in one.

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There was a little free lending library there where you could take a book and leave one.  There was a book I really wanted to take, but I didn’t have one to leave so I passed it by.   The paths in the park wove round and round and it really was so easy to walk a mile without even thinking about it.  I walked around for quite a while an met this man walking his macaw.

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He told me he walks it every day.  His name is Bobby.  The macaw, that is.  This guy is an old Navy man.    That bird was so tame, it just walked on his arm and sometimes over his shoulders and back to the other arm and he talked as it did it like it was the most normal thing in the world. You meet the nicest people and their birds while walking in a park!

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Coming through Kentucky, we stopped at this Lincoln memorial.  There are exactly 56 steps up to the memorial.  The age President Lincoln was when he was assassinated.   So young.

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This log cabin was inside the memorial. At one time it was believed the Lincolns lived in this cabin, but in recent years and with testing of the logs, they learned the cabin was too new to be of that time.  So it’s kept as a memory of log cabins.

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We walked this wooden walkway back down.

There was  a little museum where we watched a movie about Lincoln’s life.  It told that although we have learned that Abraham Lincoln’s family was very poor, they were actually middle class and very probably upper middle class at that time in history as they had been able to buy a farm.  Sadly that farm was lost because the deal had not been done legally by the seller.   They bought another farm and it was lost too.  Evidently Abe’s father wasn’t too good at making deals.

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I found this picture of Lincoln made from pennies very interesting.

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The Lincolns probably did get water from a spring here on the property.

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Then it was time to get home driving through rain over the Ohio River in Louisville.

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We are in Indiana!  Yay!

And back to home sweet home.

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To one of the prettiest gardens I’ve seen except for Bellingrath Gardens.   And I didn’t miss any of the blooms.

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The magnolias were magnificent.

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The daffodils had not faded.

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The azalea was as pretty as any I had seen down south.

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And the redbud was bursting with bloom.  It was good to be home.

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And David was so glad to get home because he was starting to look like that old man in “Up.”   Sorry I don’t know how to turn this picture, so lay on your side and look at it.  We have laughed so hard at this.   He did this playing with his cellphone one night.

Here’s to traveling and all the sights we’ve seen. Bye.

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