Wandering America
February 2008
| Mardi Gras Mardi Gras is just plain fun. We've enjoyed ourselves again this year attending parades and just getting caught up in all the hoopla. This is a big time of celebration in the south with the schools closing for the holidays - just like Christmas time. This year Carnival began on January 6th and continued until February 3rd with Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) being on February 4th. The weather didn't really cooperate for the parade schedules so we only attended one parade this year in Foley.     Rainbow Plantation celebrated by having four days of activities beginning with a Dinner on Friday (Feb. 1st). Each year they have a theme for the celebration and this year it was superheros. There were about 155 people who showed up for the spaghetti dinner and the selection of this year's King and Queen who would preside over the rest of the events. Skits were presented for the pleasure of the King and Queen.  I was "roped" into participating in one of the skits with our friend Terry Guiler. I played the part of a plumber who was called out on Superbowl Sunday to tend to a renegade toilet that was causing the hostess (Terry) of a Superbowl Party much inconvenience. Terry and I ad libbed our parts and we got plenty of laughs - you might say it was a "Flush-trating" skit. Judy said she laughed so hard that she had a hard time taking pictures.  Saturday morning we all gathered together for a breakfast and Sunday evening was the weekly Ice Cream Social followed by a bluegrass band. Monday we had a parade throughout the park at 11:00 and then had hamburgers, hot dawgs, beans, and chips for lunch - um, um good. The Mardi Gras banquet was held on Tuesday evening with over 200 in attendance. The staff has really done a great job in preparing and serving meals and this was no exception. We had pot roast with potatoes and carrots, green beans, and rolls - it was good food, good friends, and good fun. There were more skits, music, and best costume awards presented to the King and Queen as well as the rest of us. Then the King and Queen were dethroned which is part of the Mardi Gras tradition. The tables were moved back to make room for dancing with music being provided by the Northwind Band.  Upgrading Our "Home Sweet Home" When we were looking at RVs in making our selection for our fulltime home we saw a Travel Supreme Classic that had wainscoting on the wall right next to the entry. It really "dressed" the kitchen area up and was different so, naturally, I liked it. Just before we hit the road fulltime I found some red oak bead board at Menard's (a Home Depot, Lowes competitor) and just knew a project was in the making however I couldn't find the bead board anywhere else. We were on our way from Branson, MO to Nashville, TN when I spotted a Menard's store so I immediately took the exit and headed for the store to get my supplies. Now, with supplies at hand, I had to make sure that I was going to install the wainscoting without making major changes to our electrical system as our converter is on that wall. Everything went just fine and it only took a couple of days to finish the job. Here are some before and after pictures.     Now that the wainscoting is complete and looks just wonderful, I want to use the same bead board to rebuild the cabinet under the kitchen sink. We want to add another cabinet door on the living room side of the cabinet as well as a counter extension. When we get to Michigan toward the end of April I will purchase some more bead board as well as the oak needed for the frame work and the extension at the Menard's in Big Rapids. Then I'll actually accomplish the project next fall when we return to Rainbow Plantation. Visiting the USS ALABAMA Battleship Memorial Park As many times as Norm and Linda Payne have been to Rainbow Plantation they had never visited the USS ALABAMA and neither had we so the four of us went on a day trip. First we stopped at the Original Oyster House on the "causeway" leading into Mobile. We all had the special which was fried green tomatoes with shrimp and hollandaise sauce and red beans and rice. The food was good, the view was good, and the company was best.  Then it was onto the USS ALABAMA Battleship Memorial Park which was just a little way further up the causeway. The Memorial Park is made up of the USS ALABAMA, USS DRUM, a collection of aircraft, and a collection of some military equipment as well as Memorials to the Korean and Viet Nam wars. It takes around three hours to tour the ALABAMA and another hour to tour the rest of the exhibits.  The USS ALABAMA (BB-60) is one of four South Dakota class battleships built in the late 30's and early 40's. Her keel was laid on 1 February 1940 and she was launched two years later on 16 February 1942. She is 680 feet long, 108 feet wide at her beam, and 194 feet tall with a displacement of up to 44,500 tons. The ALABAMA had four engine rooms, each with two boilers and two turbines, which produced a total of 130,000 hp to drive her four propellers. Her top speed was around 28 knots and she had a range of 15,000 miles at 15 knots. The USS ALABAMA had nine 16"/54 caliber guns mounted on 3 turrets, twenty 5"/38 caliber guns mounted on ten turrets, forty-eight 40mm guns mounted on 12 turrets, and fifty-two 20mm guns. Her crew was made up of around 2,200 enlisted men and 125 officers and she earned nine battle stars on the Asiatic-Pacific Medal (one in 1943, six in 1944, and two in 1945) and also earned the Navy Occupation Service Medal Pacific for operations during September 1945.  The ALABAMA is divided up into three different tour routes, one through the forward section, one through the aft section, and one through the upper levels of the ship. We began our tour with the upper levels and worked our way down through the forward and aft sections. There are plenty of ladders to climb and descend so we managed to get a good work out.    You
just know that I had to climb to the highest point on the ship.
This is a view from my perch looking down across the radar
antenna toward the front of the ship.
 We
went from the highest point to the lowest point, that being the engine
room. Judy and Linda did a pass through but Norm and I had to
"snoop" around a little bit. There were certainly a lot of valves
and instruments to play with - we probably could have spent the rest of
the afternoon right there trying to get the engines started.
  As
we continued on our way we passed under one of the turrets for the
16"/54 Caliber Guns and saw how the shells were stored and loaded into
the guns. I don't suppose these babies are armed, do you?
 We
came across the Radio Room and Norm was right at home here with his
electronic background. To bad that they had this area fenced off
- I'm sure Norm could have gotten us "online" in short order.
 There
were several galleys onboard with this one being the main galley - It
had to serve over 2000 hungry sailors. You can see the kettles in
the background that were used to make coffee and soup. I can't
imagine how much coffee 2400 men could go through in the course of a
day but it would keep a mess cook busy.
  While
Norm and I were checking out the galley area we came across a couple of
girls trying to find a couple of lonely sailors. We were more
than happy to let them tag along with us.
 We passed through the hanger on our way from the ALABAMA to the DRUM. There are several unique displays that Norm and I spent a little time looking at but this day was about touring the ships so it was really just a pass through.     The USS DRUM (SS-228) was launched on 12 May 1941 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in New Hampshire and was commissioned on 1 November 1941. She is a diesel/electric submarine and is 311 feet long, 27 feet wide, and displaces 2,424 tons when submerged. She has four 1600 BHP diesel engines and two 1375 HP electric engines with a 20 knot surface speed and about 9 knots while submerged. Her maximum diving depth was 400 feet. The DRUM's weapons consisted of ten 21" torpedo tubes (6 forward and 4 aft) while carrying 24 torpedoes on board, one 5"/ 28 caliber gun, one 40mm gun, and one 20mm gun. Her crew consisted of 65 enlisted men and 7 officers. She was very active with 13 war patrols in the Pacific and received a total of 12 battle stars for the World War II service medal. She is credited with sinking 15 ships, a total of 80,850 tons of Japanese shipping which was the eighth highest of all U.S. submarines.  Our tour began in the forward end of the ship and worked it's way to the aft. As you can imagine the quarters were rather cramped and it was hard to believe that almost 70 men would make this their "home" for weeks on end. If you weren't careful you could easily turn around and bump into yourself.   The Rest of the Month We spent the rest of the month building the shelves into the shed and moving our "stuff" which we had been storing at our son's house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee into our storage shed. With that project behind us we will start getting ready to head out for the summer. We still have a month left here at Rainbow Plantation and there are several more day trips that we would like to do with Randy and Terry, Norm and Linda, as well as others. Warmer weather is headed our way here in the south and the flowers are already beginning to blossom so we anticipate having a really beautiful spring. Katie and Alex continue to relax and take the fulltiming lifestyle in stride. As you can tell, there just ain't no stress here!!   |