TRIP THROUGH ALABAMA and on to PENSACOLA, FLORIDA

Our trip was great until we hit Birmingham AL.  Though we had kept hearing warnings of storms moving through and all businesses and schools were closed, we had a hard time believing it until we hit it!  We seldom saw snow flurries and there sure wasn't any snow on the ground. So we just kept on cruisin'.
Our first day we stopped on the south side of Louisville and the second stop was at Athens AL to visit with Gary's nephew and wife, Michael and Cindy. We had a wonderful visit there and shared lunch with promises of stopping again sometime. They live out in the country with very winding roads. But it was beautiful countryside and many lovely homes along the way.

One of the churches that Michael serves as minister.
This one is right across the road from their home
and the second one is about ten miles down the road.

In spite of sitting on pins and needles going through Birmingham which took us THREE hours, I did think to get the camera out.

This looks like standing water, but NOT!
Probably a half inch of ice.

Where the sun hit, it was beginning to melt.
But let us hit a shady area and WOW!

I hate to imagine what it was like the next night
as I am sure it was not all melted!
No SALT there!!
We saw sand a couple times only.

This was the last leg of the journey through Birmingham,
mostly doing five mph or sitting still.

The bridges were as bad as the hills!

By time we got to Holt FL to pick up the motorhome from storage, it was getting dark. So when we reached our park destination in Pensacola it was dark and we were glad that our spot was a pull through. I was following Gary, so I had the easy part. 

We did nothing except plug in the electric and settle for the night. The rest of hooking up could wait until after church on Sunday.

It was lovely to meet our friends in Olive Baptist's Sunday School Class. We do keep in touch with them where ever we are, so it was like old home week. We went out to dinner at O'Charley's with some of the couples, and PoFolk's the next Sunday. And I will go to the Ladies lunch this Friday also. Seems that all we do is eat out with friends. Not a good thing for the waistline!

Audrey, JoAnn, Dennis, Howard, Robert, Gary, Lana and Henrietta
They had a hard fast rule of ladies together and men at the other end.
Thus we were not talking over each other and the men
were not intruding on the ladies conversation! 

The service was as usual except they no longer use the choir robes because of the cleaning bill.

The choir and orchestra is always wonderful! We always go to the early service. So I imagine the second service has many more attending. And Pastor Ted Traylor preaches like few others! He is the reason that we went back to this church after the first visit in 2012. I heard the other day that the sanctuary seats 8000. We will find out tonight as The Gaithers will be in concert there and we are going.

The church is just finishing up the construction on a school building for middle school. They just keep on growing though nothing near 8000 for a Sunday morning. They have many areas of outreach for the community, including a sports gym.  I went to a full scrapbooking day which is from 10am to 10pm, though I only spent about six hours there. I didn't like leaving the church after dark to navigate their city streets and many outlying streets with no lighting. They only meet once a month, so will have to wait for another visit to meet with them again. The leader of the group could use your prayers for her son who had a stroke just four days after his graduation. He is gaining function all of the time, and no longer has any paralysis. But has much ground to cover yet.

It took us several days to unpack and put away stuff that we had used in the condo for several months while the motorhome was in storage. But after getting that settled, we began our doctor and dentist appointments and a trip to our favorite used book store (not that we need more books right now). I also got the 2016 Blog book ordered and downloaded pictures. 

After the first COLD night here, it began to warm up gradually. It got into the 70's so we took a day and drove down to Perdido Beach to enjoy the Gulf. That was a great beach as we did not have to walk over any big dunes. 

People were enjoying the sand, surfing and fishing. We sure enjoyed the sun and sat out for an hour or more. We also were glad for the chairs that Bill and Jane introduced us to. They are a little heavy, but so easy to carry and keep in the car because they fold so small. 

We were going to get lunch at the Purple Parrot up the road,

but found that they were not to be open until a week later. So we went on into Pensacola to our old haunt, The Oar House, and enjoyed fish and shrimp. We could watch the boats coming and going there.

The rest of the month will be more of eating out with friends, seeing doctors and having tests and sightseeing. Unfortunately, it will be gone before we know where it went and then we will move on farther south.

Stay with us.