Living Our Dream

Summerdale, AL - Getting Settled

Summerdale, AL - Events of Monday, October 22 to Thursday, October 25, 2012

We left Montgomery on Monday for about a 3½-hour drive to Summerdale, AL. As we said in our last post, the engine of the motor home purred like a kitten with the new spark plugs and wires Paul had installed toward the end of our stay in Montgomery.

We pulled into the Escapees Rainbow Plantation shortly after noon and got one of the same couple of sites we usually get. The roads at Rainbow Plantation are paved, and the widely-spaced sites are grass, but the grass is sometimes a little sparse directly under the many live oak trees. Although there are a fair number of trees, our roof-top satellite dish can usually peek between them to lock onto a signal.

Our site at Rainbow Plantation

View down the road from our site

Rainbow Plantation has a campground, co-op sites and deeded lots. The campground has full hookups. About half the RV sites have 30-amp electric, and the other half have 30/50 amps. There is a fee for Wi-Fi so we use our Verizon Broadband when we're at Rainbow Plantation. Verizon Broadband is nice and strong in the area, and it is 4G.

We are scheduled to be in Summerdale for 6 weeks, and we plan to do a lot of relaxing. During our previous stays, we also have found several eateries in the area we really like. We plan to visit all of them at least once. We may do a little sightseeing, but we don't have any specific plans because we have other important business to tend to.

Margery has been going to an ophthalmologist who has been monitoring the condition of her cataracts for the past several years. When we were in Pittsburgh for our doctor appointments back in 2011, he told her the time for cataract surgery was getting close. When she had her appointment this year, Margery's ophthalmologist told her the time for surgery had arrived.

Margery really wanted her cataract surgery done by her regular ophthalmologist; but, unfortunately, his surgery schedule was booked up over two months out. Margery has to have both eyes done, and they like to have the surgeries no less than about 10 days to two weeks apart. They also want a followup visit two weeks after the second surgery, so that means the minimum amount of time we would have had to spend in Pittsburgh was a month. Factoring in the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, we would have ended up having to be in Pittsburgh from the end of November into early January.

Our options were to stay in the motor home in Pittsburgh in cold weather, to take the motor home to Florida and drive back to Pittsburgh in the car to stay with Lora and J. Michael for the entire period, or to go to Florida for the winter as planned and go back to Pittsburgh in the motor home in the early spring for the surgery. In the end, we decided against all those options because Margery got a recommendation for a good ophthalmologist in the Summerdale area, so she will have cataract surgery while we're in Alabama. She was able to schedule in advance an initial visit with the ophthalmologist as well as a pre-surgery physical, the surgeries for both eyes and the post-surgery checkups. We'll keep everyone posted as things progress.

Those who follow our blog regularly know by now we love good barbecue. Up until we stopped at Champs for barbecue while we were in Montgomery, we hadn't had barbecue in a long time. That barbecue was so good, it made us want more. Therefore, we headed over to L.A. Barbeque in Summerdale on Tuesday afternoon for a late lunch.

L.A. Barbeque

The place is really a lot bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside. We'll have to try to remember to get a picture of the inside when we go back, and we will definitely be going back while we're here.

L.A. Barbeque has pork, ribs, brisket and chicken. Sandwiches come in two sizes that range in price from $4.25 for a small pork to $6.75 for a large brisket. Sides can be added to your sandwich order for $1.25 to $1.50 each. Lunch plates are $5.99 to $7.99 and include two sides. Dinner plates are $8.99 to $12.99 with two sides. They also sell their meats by the pound and sides by the pint, quart and gallon for takeout and for parties.

We both had chopped pork barbecue lunch plates with slaw and potato salad for our sides. The pork is slightly smoky, tender and moist. They have several barbecue sauces to choose from including Carolina, Texas Tangy, Southern Sweet and Fire in the Hole. Paul likes a mixture of Carolina and Texas while Margery likes Southern and Texas.

Chopped pork lunch plate

Margery about to add Texas Tangy barbecue sauce

The sides at L.A. Barbeque are excellent. In addition to cole slaw, potato salad, French fries and beans that they have every day, they also have one or two special sides each day that include things like lima beans (one of Paul's favorites), turnips with corn bread, and creamed corn.

On Wednesday, Margery had an appointment for a haircut, and we hung out around the motor home the rest of the day. We stopped at Sam's Club and Lowe's on Thursday on our way to Panini Pete's in Fairhope for another late lunch.

Panini Pete's was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives back in 2008. Most of what they serve is prepared fresh in-house. They roast their own turkey and beef, they bake their own bread, and they even make their own mozzarella. In addition to paninis, they also have gourmet burgers and hot dogs.

Panini Pete's has two locations - one in downtown Mobile and the one we always go to on the eastern side of Mobile Bay in downtown Fairhope. Fairhope has vibrant downtown with many busy shops. There is free parking and there are attractive flowers planted on every street corner.

Attractive plantings decorate the streets of downtown Fairhope

Panini Pete's is located behind some shops on the main street along a patio they call the French Quarter. We always like to sit outside on the patio if the weather is nice.

We both had our favorite, which is the turkey panino with baby greens, roasted red pepper, garlic aioli and house-made mozzarella on foccacia.

House-roasted turkey panino with shoestring fries

The paninis were delicious as they always are. We took the long way back to Rainbow Plantation past the fancy bay-front homes south of Fairhope along Mobile Bay.

Margery starts her pre-surgery doctor appointments with the initial visit with the ophthalmologist on Friday. We'll let you know how the appointment went in our next post.

Montgomery, AL Part IV - Motor Home Project - Replace Spark Plugs and Wires

Montgomery, AL - Events of Thursday, October 18 to Monday, October 22, 2012

On our last few travel days, we noticed a slight mis-fire in the engine of our motor home. The 8.1 liter GM engine used in our motor home is notorious for burning spark plug wires because of the high heat caused by heavy loads. The internal parts of the engine are cooled by water circulating through the engine and radiator. However, heavy loads can also cause external parts of the engine to run hot. Although there haven't been many reported problems with Tiffin's gas-powered motor homes, many manufacturers do not provide large enough grill openings to allow sufficient air flow around the outside of the engine to dissipate heat. Heat causes the insulation on the spark plug wires to deteriorate over time. The deterioration of the insulation causes electrical leakage, which in turn causes the spark plug to mis-fire.

On our last stop in Chattanooga, Paul climbed under the motor home and took a look at the plug wires, but he didn't see any signs of deterioration. On our drive to Montgomery, the mis-fire seemed to be a little worse, so Paul got more serious about checking things out. This time, he removed several of the spark plug wires and checked the resistance with his volt-ohm meter. One of the wires had resistance that was higher than the others. High resistance is a sign that the wire has deteriorated, so Paul decided to bite the bullet and replace all the wires.

While he had the wires off for testing, Paul also pulled out one spark plug to check it out. The spark plugs are platinum-tipped and are supposed to be good for 100,000 miles, and our motor home only has about 69,000 miles on it. The spark plug Paul removed didn't look that bad, but the electrodes were somewhat worn. Therefore, Paul decided to replace the plugs while he was at it since he was going to have all the wires off anyway.

Old spark plug - note rounding of center electrode

Unlike the special exhaust gasket Paul had to track down a few weeks ago, the 8.1 liter engine in the motor home uses the same spark plugs and wires as the GM pickup trucks. Paul's online research indicated O'Reilly's Auto Parts a few miles up the road had the wires and plugs for a Chevy pickup in stock. Gotta love the internet. We stopped to pick them up on Thursday on the way to Walmart.

As soon as we got back to the motor home, Paul got to work removing the old plug wires and plugs. If you turn the front wheels of the motor home all the way to the right, you can climb up behind the left front tire and work on that side of the engine. Turn the wheels to the left to work on the right side.

Old plug wires on the left side of the engine

Once you wiggle your way up in there, there is enough room to sit upright or kneel and reach all the plugs without too much difficulty. It is, however, pretty dirty under there with road grime on every surface, black brake dust on the sidewalls of the tires and greasy steering linkage that is hard to avoid leaning against.

Paul working on the left-side spark plugs

After Paul removed all the wires, he did a visual inspection. None of them looked that bad. There was no visible cracking of the insulation and no signs of carbon-tracking that would indicate electrical leakage. Then he checked the resistance to confirm his previous findings. The resistance of two of them was indeed higher than the rest. One was about 3,000 ohms, and one was about 13,000 ohms while the rest were all around 1,100. Paul's research indicated normal resistance for plug wires the length of ours should not exceed about 2,500 ohms. The resistance of the all the new wires was about 500 ohms.

Paul didn't mark where the old wires came from when he took them off, but he thinks the one with the highest resistance was from the #7 cylinder (rear cylinder on the drivers side), which is also the spark plug that is adjacent to the broken exhaust manifold stud that we had repaired a several months ago in Kentucky. It is possible the heat from the exhaust leak at the broken stud caused that wire to deteriorate.

Old plugs and wires from one side of the engine (left) and new

The metal cylinders at the top of the photo above are the heat shields that go over the boots at the ends of the wires where they fit over the spark plugs.

After a repair like this, Paul always likes to take the vehicle for a test drive, but that wasn't practical with the motor home. After replacing the spark plugs and wires, the engine started and ran fine at idle and when revved. Therefore, Paul decided to just keep his fingers crossed and wait until we left Montgomery a few days later to see how the engine ran under load rather than pack everything up for a test drive.

We hung out around the motor home over the weekend and left Monday morning for our next destination of Summerdale, AL. We're happy to report the motor home engine purred like a kitten and the mis-fire in the engine was completely gone. In fact, the engine ran more smoothly and felt stronger than it has all summer. Our gas mileage had also dropped about 6% this summer, so it will be interesting to see if it improves with the new plugs and wires.

We'll have a report on our arrival in Summerdale and on what we were up to during the first several days of our stay in our next post.

Montgomery, AL Part III: Good Eats

Montgomery, AL - Events of Tuesday, October 16 to Friday, October 19, 2012

After we finished our tour of the First Confederate White House on Tuesday, we had one more thing in the downtown area we weren't sure whether we wanted to do or not, so we drove several blocks to the northwest to check it out. Old Alabama Town is a collection of about three dozen old homes and other buildings from 1800s and early 1900s that have been rescued from demolition and restored.

When we arrived, we could see 4 tour buses in the back parking lot and a gaggle of kids playing in the playground in front of the visitor center. Although you have to pay $10 to see the buildings up close and to tour the insides, many of the buildings can be seen from the street. Therefore, we decided to just walk down the street and check things out from the outside before we paid our admission fee. Below are a few of the things we could see as we walked by.

Lucas Tavern c.1810

Looking over the fence into a garden

Old Alabama Town looked like it might be interesting, but we were kind of tired and hungry, so we decided to skip it for this visit. It will be a good excuse to come back some day.

The Tucker Pecan Company is located on the corner across from Old Alabama Town, so we stopped in on our way back to the car. We sampled some delicious cinnamon pecans and some chocolate-covered pecans; but since we are still limiting our carbs and sugar, we decided not to buy anything.

Tucker Pecan Company

On the way back to the motor home, we stopped at Las Casitas Mexican Restaurant located in Prattville, AL for a late lunch. Not only did Las Casitas get good online reviews, it wasn't too far out of our way since we were staying just a little to the east of Prattville.

Las Casitas Mexican Restaurant

Lunch specials are $5.50 to $6.00. Margery had a chicken chimichanga with refried beans and a small guacamole salad, and Paul had a chicken burrito and a chili relleno combo that also included a small guacamole salad. Both meals were delicious, and the service was efficient.

Paul with his lunch combo

We hung out around the motor home on Wednesday, and we drove to the eastern side of Montgomery on Thursday to stop at Sam's Club to pick up a few items we needed. Then we stopped at Walmart to restock groceries. Back at the motor home, Paul worked on a project in the afternoon. We'll have more info on the project in our next post.

It's been a long time since we have had barbecue. There are numerous barbecue joints in the area, so we decided to try one of them for lupper on Friday afternoon. Most of the local barbecue places got good online reviews, so we had a hard time deciding which one to go to. We ended up at Champs Barbecue about 15 minutes to the north of the campground in Wetumpka, AL.

Champs Barbecue

Champs has pork barbecue, ribs and smoked sausage. They also have burgers and chicken tenders for those not interested in barbecue. Sandwiches and burgers are $3.75. Sides are extra. Plates cost $7.90 for one meat and two sides and $10.90 for two meats and two sides. Rib plates cost $12.95. We both had chopped pork plates. Margery had cole slaw and onion rings for her sides, and Paul had slaw and potato salad.

Chopped pork barbecue plate

Margery can't wait to dig in.

The service was fast and friendly, and the food was delicious. The pork was tender, moist and smoky. The sauce was a perfect blend of sweet and tart - just the way we like it. The slightly-sweet, crunchy cole slaw went well with the slightly-tart barbecue sauce. Margery thought the onion rings were delicious, and Paul's potato salad had a hint of dill.

We love the cute signs and pig-themed decor that many barbecue joints have. We especially liked the pig made from old license plates at Champs.

Pig made from old license plates

Paul caught sight of the "Hog Wash" sign as we were going out the door, and he couldn't help but chuckle out loud.

Hog wash

As we said earlier, Paul worked on a project during our stay, and we'll have a report on it in our next post.

Montgomery, AL Part II: First Confederate White House

Montgomery, AL - Events of Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Located to the immediate south of the Alabama State Capitol building in downtown Montgomery is the First White House of the Confederacy. As we mentioned in our last post, the Confederate States of America was organized and Jefferson Davis was elected president in the Senate Chamber in the Alabama State Capitol in 1861, so it was only fitting that Montgomery would serve as the capital of the Confederacy, at least initially.

After we toured the Capitol, we walked over to the First Confederate White House. Self-guided tours are available every day except Sunday. Admission is free.

First Confederate White House

The newly-formed Confederate States of America leased the house for Jefferson Davis and his family for $5,000 a year, which was an enormous sum back then. Originally located several blocks away, the house was moved to its present location beside the Capitol in 1921.

Photo of First Confederate White House in its original location taken in 1901

The two-story Italianate frame house, which was built between 1832 and 1835, had been previously owned by several prominent Montgomery citizens. Today, the house is furnished with many items originally belonging to Jefferson Davis and his family as well as other pieces from the 1850s and 1860s. Many of the items belonging to the Davis family came from their post-war retirement home Beauvoir in Biloxi, MS. Click here to read about our 2011 visit to Beauvoir.

Photography is permitted inside the First Confederate White House provided you don't use a flash, so we are able to show many of the rooms.

Entry hall

In addition to the entry hall, the first floor had the bedrooms of Jefferson and Mrs. Davis, a double parlor, the dining room, the kitchen (not part of the tour) and a study.

Jefferson Davis' bedroom

Mrs. Davis' bedroom

Double parlor

Dining room

Jefferson Davis maintained an office in one of the government buildings, but some of the business of the Confederacy was conducted in the study of the Davis' home.

Study where some of the business of the Confederacy was conducted

The second floor had the children's rooms and guest rooms.

Second floor guest room

One of the former bedrooms on the second floor was set up as a small museum and contained many personal items belonging to the Davis family and items from the First White House like the piece of Confederate bunting in the display case in the foreground of the photo below.

Margery in the small, second-floor museum

After we finished our tour of the First White House, we did a little more exploring in downtown Montgomery. We also ate out a couple of times over the next several days. We'll tell you more in our next post.

Montgomery, AL Part I: Alabama State Capitol

Montgomery, AL - Events of Monday, October 15 to Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Our next destination after leaving the Chattanooga area was Montgomery, AL. We got a fairly early start Monday morning because it was another longer than usual drive of almost 5 hours. We also had to hook up the toad and stop at the dump station before we hit the road. Fortunately, we gained an hour because we drove into the Central Time Zone shortly after leaving Chattanooga. We pulled into Capital City RV Park, which is located on the northern side of Montgomery, about 1:45 CDST.

Capital City RV Park has 85 or 90 full-hookup sites with 30/50-amp electric. All but about 10 of the sites are pull-throughs. The roads are semi-paved (tar and chips), the widely-spaced sites are fresh gravel and the generously-sized patios are concrete. The sites are also extra-long. There is well-manicured grass and shrubs between the sites with a few larger trees here and there. The nice landscaping is a testament to the owners' previous landscaping business.

Our site at Capital City RV

View down our row at Capital City RV

The campground has free cable and Wi-Fi. Our site was toward the back of the campground so the Wi-Fi signal was a little weak. There were a few times (usually in the late afternoon when everyone returned form the day's activities) when we got dumped off and couldn't reconnect. However, when the Wi-Fi worked, which was most of the time, it was fairly fast. When it didn't work, we used our Verizon Broadband, which is 4G in the Montgomery area.

There is some traffic noise from the 4-lane road that passes the campground, but it diminishes at night. You can also sometimes hear a few distant trains depending on which way the wind is blowing.

The standard nightly rate at Capital City RV is $30, which isn't bad for full hookups, 50 amps, free Wi-Fi, free cable and big sites. However, their weekly rate of $140 is a real bargain. The price was so good we even decided to spring for an additional $10 for the week for an extra-large site since we had just spent several days in tight quarters at Chester Frost Park.

Montgomery is the capital of Alabama, so one of the things we decided to do was to see the Alabama State Capitol building. Free, self-guided tours are available Monday through Friday for individuals and small groups. Large groups can call to arrange for guided tours.

We headed into Montgomery on Tuesday morning. Since the legislature was not in session, there was plenty of metered, on-street parking available in the vicinity of the capitol. Metered parking in that area was very reasonable at 25 cents for 30 minutes with a two-hour limit.

Alabama had several territorial and state capitol buildings in several other cities before moving the state capital to Montgomery in 1846. The current capitol building is constructed from stucco over brick. It was completed in 1851 and is the second capitol in Montgomery. The first was destroyed by fire.

Alabama Capitol

The Alabama State Capitol is fairly modest compared to some of the very impressive granite and marble structures we have seen. Even though there have been a couple of wings added over the years, the capitol building is relatively small, so most of the state's business is conducted in a series of office buildings such as the one shown below that surround the Capitol.

One of many office buildings that surround the capitol

Even the legislature no longer uses the Capitol. They meet and have their offices in the State House which is located behind the Capitol.

The main entry hall is flanked by a pair of cantilevered, spiral staircases that lead to the second and third floors. Paul always likes spiral staircases because of the sweeping curves and different shapes that can be seen from different angles.

Spiral staricase looking up from the first floor

Looking straight up from below

The pair of staircases as seen from the second floor

In what used to be the Supreme Court Chamber there is a display honoring the Alabama's Fallen Heroes. The display is flanked by a pair of symbolic Fallen Soldier's Battle Crosses that are made up of boots, rifles and helmets.

Fallen Heroes display

From the second floor rotunda, you can look up into the dome and see the stained glass skylight at the top. The original rotunda was very plain. Ornate plasterwork and a marble floor were added 1906-1912, and the murals above the third floor depicting Alabama history were added in the late 1920s.

Alabama State Capitol rotunda

After the legislature moved to the State House 1985, the old House Chamber was restored to its 1870-1890 appearance. The old House Chamber was the the site of a meeting in January, 1861 where Alabama voted to secede from the Union.

Old House Chamber restored to its 1870-1890 appearance

Old House Chamber from the gallery

The old Senate Chamber is restored to look the way it did in 1861.

Senate Chamber restored to its appearance in 1861

View of the Senate Chamber from the gallery

The year 1861 is significant because delegates from the secessionist states met in the Alabama Senate Chamber on February 4, 1861 to organize the government of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederacy on the front steps of the Capitol. Montgomery served as the CSA capital until it was moved to Richmond in late May, 1861.

Plaque commemorating the formation of the Confederate States of America

After we toured the Alabama State Capitol, we had one more thing we wanted to see in the neighborhood. We'll tell you about it in our next post.