Cracklins

We already had reservations at a hotel in Lake Charles, LA for the night so in terms of driving Friday would be a relatively short day.  We took the opportunity to sleep in a little bit and we were on the road by about 9:30.  We were hungry but we wanted something a little different.  We opted for Krispy Kreme because the hot donuts from there are a special thing.  There are almost no Krispy Kremes back home, in fact the one we used to have close by (it was a half hour from home) went out of business because New Englanders only seem to like Dunkin’ Donuts.  Now the nearest one to our house is over 100 miles away!  In the south they are everywhere.  We went to the nearest one, only 3 miles from our hotel and we got our fix of the hot donuts.  The light outside was flashing so we knew there would be fresh donuts.  We ate a half dozen between the two of us followed by a bottle of milk before we got on the road.

After leaving Krispy Kreme we headed west.  We entered into Mississippi after only a few minutes and raced across the state in about an hour.  Just before hitting the Louisiana border we stopped at a rest area where they had a lunar lander on display.  We thought that was pretty cool.  This particular one never went to the moon, it was only used in training but as far as we could tell it was the real thing.

We got back on the road and pointed towards Abita Springs, LA, where there was a very unusual museum called the Abita Springs Mystery House or the UCM Museum (pronounced “you see ‘em).  The museum features an eclectic collection of antiques as well as all kinds of “stuff”.  The $3 entrance fee was well worth it as we spent about 45 minutes exploring the most unusual place.  We definitely recommend it to anyone who may be visiting the New Orleans area. It is a nice little day trip and if you go on a Saturday there is a brewery in town as well that gives tours on Saturdays. 

When you press the button a tornado starts swirling in the middle.  It eventually knocks over the trailer on the left side.

You can actually play this organ but you need two people.  One to crank on the right side and one to play.

Inside the box

This machine stole one of our quarters.

After leaving the Mystery House we were getting hungry.  While in this area of the country there is all kinds of good food, we had one very particular place and type of food in mind:  Andre’s Cajun Cracklins, just west of Baton Rouge.  We had been there before for their tamales and cracklins and since we were last there well over a year ago we have been craving them.  There are many roadside stands throughout this area that sell cracklins but the ones we found here seem to be especially good.  We don’t think cracklins are very good for you but they sure taste good.  We drove for about an hour and a half from the Mystery House to Andres where we ordered a pound of cracklins, a half dozen tamales, some cheddar stuffed breaded jalapenos, a meat pie and a crawfish pie.  When you hear pie you probably think of a large sized pie but the meat pie and crawfish pie are actually about the size of an empanada. Our whole mean came to only $26 and we ate our meal in the car.  We were very full for the rest of the day but just in case we brought some cracklins with us. 

Tamales

Cracklins

After getting our fill we headed west again, this time staying about 10-15 miles north of the interstate, and drove towards Lake Charles.  We made one more stop, at a McDonald’s restaurant for a southern tradition, sweet potato pie.  We rarely go to McDonalds restaurants but when we are away from home we try to make a point to go because they usually have something regional on the menu.  This time it was sweet potato pie.  Think of a McDonalds apple pie but instead of apple you have sweet potato.  As expected, they were quite good.  We got back on I-10 about 20 minutes from Lake Charles and we arrived at our hotel a little before 7.

Alabama Tour

We ended up spending 3 ½ days in Huntsville for work.  While we were there we had an opportunity to visit the Botanical Garden-Galaxy of Lights at night where they had a drive through Christmas lights display.  They charged what we thought was a steep $20 per car but it turned out to be well worth it.  After you paid they really helped set the scene by recommending we dim our headlights and they told us to tune our radio to a certain station which was broadcasting holiday music. These two things made it even nicer.  The drive through took just under a half hour and they had just about every imaginable Christmas scene in lights.  They even had Christmas dinosaurs.  We were glad we paid to drive through although it did seem kind of unusual seeing all of the Christmas lights in 50 degree weather.  It didn’t seem the same without the cold weather. 

We finally left Huntsville on Thursday afternoon after work, heading towards Houston.  Houston is only a 12 or so hour drive from Huntsville but we had a couple of days to get there.  We wanted to make the drive south through Alabama on Thursday so that we would have a little more time to meander our way along the coast towards Houston where we would arrive on Saturday.  Of course we got distracted on the way down.  We left sometime after lunch and had our minds on BBQ.  The BBQ place we discovered in Huntsville a month ago unfortunately was closed.  Chris got to talking to one of the owners who was outside working on the building.  He told Chris that the place closed the week after Thanksgiving and the week after Christmas, giving workers time to spend with their families.  He said those two weeks were usually slow anyway so it made sense.  We told him we were headed south and we needed good BBQ so he recommended a place in Birmingham, which was less than 2 hours away.  So we were off.  We made a quick stop at the airport where we switched out cars one more time and got moving.  After only an hour we hit our first distraction.  We had planned on possibly visiting the Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman, AL, depending on how much time we had.  The Grotto is a landscaped, 4-acre park in an old quarry on the grounds of St. Bernard Abbey, providing a garden setting for 125 miniature reproductions of some of the most famous religious structures of the world.  The stone and concrete models are the work of one of the Benedictine monks of St. Bernard's, who devoted 50 years to the project, the last three decades almost without interruption. They incorporate discarded building supplies, bricks, marbles, tiles, pipes, sea shells, marbles, plastic animals, costume jewelry, toilet bowl floats and even cold cream jars.  We didn’t think this visit would take more than a few minutes but in the end we think we were there close to an hour checking out the amazingly detailed carvings. 



This monument is called the Tower of Thanks built from various materials to show the sculptor's thanks to everyone who donated materials.



Shrine of Peter

Monastery at Montserrat

Temple of the Fairies

Hansel and Gretel visit the Castle of the Fairies

This dragon underneath the castle is "restrained" by a chain.  The monster was chained to reassure children that this monster was under control.

Rome

Little Jerusalem

We left the monastery, still hungry, and headed towards Birmingham.  As we drove through the town of Cullman we saw quite a bit of destruction from what we later found out was a powerful tornado that came through town over a year and a half ago, in April 2011.  Even though it was so long ago there were still a good deal of foundations with no homes and still a good number of boarded up houses and snapped trees.  We didn’t take any pictures but we were surprised by how much has not yet been rebuilt.  We then got back on the interstate and arrived in Birmingham closer to dinnertime than to lunchtime.  We went to the Full Moon Bar-B-Que which was recommended to us by the guy in Huntsville.  We each got a combination plate, Jackie’s coming with BBQ chicken and ribs, with Chris getting pulled pork and sausage.  We each got an order of fried green tomatoes, Jackie got baked beans and Chris got something called chow-chow, which was a spicy type of coleslaw.  We left fully satisfied, ready for the couple of hours drive south.

 

Of course, we got sidetracked once more.  It turns out the geographic center of Alabama was only about 5 miles out of our way so we headed there next.  The center of the state is located in a cemetery.  The cemetery is definitely older than the plaque indicating the center of the state so we wondered if that was the true center or if the center was nearby, perhaps on private property, and they conveniently put the plaque there because the cemetery was already there.  Either way it was kind of cool.  We explored the cemetery a little bit too and besides lots of old graves we found one very interesting one.  There seemed to be some kind of elevated covering on one of the graves, about the size and shape of a coffin, but made out of some kind of stone.  It appeared to be some kind of cover over the grave.  The strange thing was that there was a hole in it.  When you looked in the hole you weren’t sure if you were going to see a skeleton in there or not.  We looked inside and there was nothing.  It was kind of neat though.

We left the cemetery, it was just about dark by this time, and we started driving towards Mobile.  We had planned on visiting a big peach water tower.  This was a water tower resembling a peach instead of the standard tank on top.  Because it was dark and we didn’t have directions (we only knew the town), we could not find it.  We then drove south a couple of more hours, the only other distraction was for gas, which was a very nice $3.11 per gallon!  We got to our hotel in Mobile at about 9 and went to sleep pretty quick.

Alabama tour