Friday was pretty much a work day for Connie so Neil bailed about 1100 or so and went on a long bike ride. He went on the loop back country trail he went on with Connie the other day again to try and stay in the trees and out of the wind…it didn’t work very well so when he got to the end of the loop he zigged instead of zagged and came home another way that added another 3 or so miles to the ride…which was his main intention anyway. While on the ride he did stop at one of the overlooks and get this snapshot of a Great Blue Heron…it’s sort of lousy since it is’s an iPhone telephoto shot that was cropped to get it to be more than just a blue dot but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

After the ride we lazed around the afternoon then headed over to the Elks Lodge for the Friday Evening fish fry. Cold draft beer for $8 a pitcher–check. Fried fish platter that was fried in corn meal instead of batter (the way God intended fish to be fried)–check. Delicious hushpuppies–check. Met nice folks to talk to who happened to be RVers staying at the state park near us and who had a great recommendation for the Elks Lodge in Great Falls, MT where we are going in a month or two–check. A great time was had by all and then we came home and split a piece of carrot cake that Neil bought from the Walmart (hey, we needed soda and were looking for Italian Ice…but they only had Luigi’s brand which we don’t like as it’s much more like ice cream than icy like an Italian Ice should be. Nothing wrong with Gelato but it ain’t Italian Ice.)

Today Connie worked on catching up some of her email backup, planned a bit more for upcoming travels, and had the all important afternoon siesta. Neil went running and then decided to test out this really neat new camera application he found for the iPhone named 360Panorama. This lets you take a panorama type photo and then shows it to you so that you can drag around in the photo and move around. He tested it out by taking one of out campsite. Anyway; click and drag around in the photo you see below and you’ll see how it works. Assuming it actually works once I post this; I can see some landscape pano’s in our future.

Bummer; you can’t insert Javascript code into a WordPress site…they’re worried about the security of running code. So; click here instead and it will show you the panorama instead, it will open in a new browser window or tab depending on your computer settings. He needs to play with this a bit more and figure out how to get the exposure a little better; the sky got kinda overexposed and he’s not sure if that’s overexposure or just the overcast but bright sky we see outside, it could really be either.

Dinner tonight was Coq au Vin (that’s chicken in wine sauce) served with noodles. Coq au Vin was invented as a way to take your old rooster who had outlived his usefulness as a hen impregnator and turn him into dinner. Unfortunately, old roosters got kinda tough and so the French (God bless them for their cooking, they have made life bearable for the rest of us…their politics, not so much though.) figured that if you cooked it with onions, bacon, garlic, mushrooms, and wine it would get tender and tasty…and by golly they’re right. After cooking the veggies and browning the chicken I added some Malbec wine, a couple of chopped Pepperincini peppers, and a dash of balsamic vinegar. We served it over noodles and with the rest of the Malbec and it was really good. Here’s a shot of it; we got leftovers that we’ll probably have for dinner tomorrow served over some polenta (the Italian version of grits…the only grits Connie likes).

Tomorrow is Mass in the AM and then we gotta go fill BAT with fuel for our trip a week from Monday we normally drive BAT once a week while we’re parked so that will accomplish two goals with one trip. Don’t know what Monday holds; probably a work day since Tuesday we have a monster local trip planned; we will be off really early to visit Neil’s parents gravesite, visit Greg McAtee to handle some Laubenthal Land and Timber business (transferring Neil’s stock to joint with right of survivorship), a visit to Bellingrath Gardens south of Mobile (since Connie likes gardens and flowers) and then we’ll probably stop by Lulu’s Restaurant (Jimmy Buffet’s sister) or Wentzels (whichever we don’t’ eat at Monday night).

Cyas