Flora-Bama and the USS Alabama

What is Flora-Bama, you say?  Well, everyone kept telling us that we just had to go see it. It gets it's name from the fact that it is on the beach at the border of Florida and Alabama. It appears as though someone collected a whole bunch of scrap materials which were strewn about during a hurricane years ago and built a bar out of it. Then after all the other hurricanes, they would collect more material each time and add on. We drove right by it and had to stop at a gas station to ask where it was. We were told that it was "down the road behind the trailer selling T-shirts,and that it looked like a construction site".

   These above pictures are of the outside. The one with the porta-john is when we were looking for a way in. The door said "exit" but we entered anyway. The other picture is of the entrance which we found later on our way out. The beer was cold and the Royal Red shrimp were great. It's something that everyone visiting the area need to see. I can't believe that the city allows it to stay open. The roof over the dance floor was PVC pipes taped together with a large tarp covering them. On a rope above the dance floor hung a bunch of bras and bikini tops. If you ever get there, look for Deb's. We were there on Valentines day so she was wearing a sexy little red one. The place sits right on the beach between some huge, beautiful condominiums.

Our Visit to the USS Alabama was on another earlier treck. It is actually the first tourist site that we visited. I don't know how the sailors got around that ship without getting lost. Along with it is a submarine and a hanger full of aircraft.

This little piggy went to market...

   As everybody knows, I love to hunt so when we got to south Alabama I decided right away to get out and talk to some landowners to gain acces so I could deer hunt the last month of the season which ended January 31. I found out right away that this area really doesn't have any deer to speak of but there are a lot of wild feral pigs. I don't care if it's wild parakeets, I like to hunt so off I went.

   I have never really pig hunted before so I thought that I was pretty damn good when I killed two the first afternoon and 6 the first 5 days. I won't go nto all the deatails but I can tell you that these pigs are pretty cotton pickin' smart because once they learned that I was after them, they have managed to evade me every step of the way since. For a week and a half now I'm having trouble finding them much less shooting one. I know that they are still here because I saw about 80 of them in one field so the 6 that I killed didn't even put a dent in the population.

A picture is worth a thousand words so here are some pictures.

   This big boar was over 400 pounds and had 5" tusks which were as sharp as a knife.

Sweet Home Alabama

   Sweet Home Alabama. Well it’s not exactly home but it’s where we are living right now while the rest of the country is in a deep freeze.

   Our time spent in Asheville was quite nice spending time with friends and family over the holidays but with freezing temperatures most of the time that we were there, it wasn’t a lot of fun dealing with things like frozen pipes. These RV’s aren’t really made for cold weather living, but we survived the 7 weeks that we were there.

   When we left Asheville, we made a three day stop in Nashville, TN and spent New Years with some friends and then headed south to the gulf coast to get out of all things frozen.

   Since I do all of the driving, I wanted to stop and rest for a while. I  figured that south Alabama would be a good place to do that. Our home for he next several months is the Magnolia Springs Golf and RV Resort just north of Gulf Shores Alabama. We’ve already been here two weeks and I’m finally sitting down to blog for the first time in months.
   In the time that we have been here, the weather has bounced around quite a bit. It got down to 26 and 27 two consecutive nights but was in the mid forties during the day. Today was really nice, Deb and I took Molly down to the beach and walked for about an hour. I was hot and sweaty by the time we got back to the truck. I guess 65 degrees and bright sunshine will do that to a person. It’s pretty weird walking on the beach here, everybody is from Wisconsin.

   The first weekend that we got here I went out knocking on doors to gain permission to hunt. I talked to nine landowners and got permission from seven of them. It seems that there are a lot of wild pigs in this area and they are causing a lot of property damage. I was told that they are very difficult to hunt and if you put a little pressure on them, they simply leave the area and take up residence elsewhere.

   After about 4 hours of hunting, I had already seen about 30 and killed two. Yes, they are difficult to hunt because they live in the thickest nastiest brush that you ever want to see and just because you see them doesn’t mean that you will have an opportunity for a shot because the brush is thick and they don’t stop moving for more than a second or two.

   After killing two pigs, I thought that I would donate the meat to a local charity but I found out that there are no local donation programs available for pork. They will take all the venison you can give them but no pork. Since the area has a pig problem, you would think that they could solve two problems at the same time by making it easy to donate pork to the needy.

Not only could I not find a donation program, I then spent several hours figuring out that there weren’t any pork processors here either. I found out that the State of Alabama quit allowing people who cut up deer to do pigs anymore. I’m sure that they had a reason but it sure seems counterproductive to me. I had to drive 50 miles to a processor in Florida to have my pigs cut up. I’m sending the meat home so it’s waiting for us when we get there.

The next little piggy is going on a big smoker for a pig roast here at the RV park.