I am writing this from my sister's house in Wisconsin. I came up here on Thursday to attend the high school graduation ceremony for my niece. I will be staying another week yet to attend her party. My husband stayed home with the dogs. He says he is sweltering in 90+ heat with high humidity. The weather here is beautiful: sunny, temps in the 70's and 80's with no humidity to speak of. What a contrast to when I was here in February! I'll add some photos to this post after I get back home.

    My sister's shoulder is finally doing well. (If you don't remember, she had surgery on it in February.) She still has some pain from time to time but up until a few weeks ago she was in constant pain so it is very much better.
   Some of my friends (one from Louisville and the others from Chicago) came up to Wisconsin for the weekend. They stayed at Fox Hills Resort which is just down the road from my sister's house. My sister owns a timeshare there but they stayed in the hotel ($49 a night for the Memorial Day weekend). Yesterday we took them on a tour of the town where we grew up (Two Rivers) and the adjoining town, Manitowoc. They got to see them at their best as the sky and Lake Michigan were bright blue and the trees and grass deep green. These were the sights we visited:

• Neshoto Park and Beach in Two Rivers
• Main street in Two Rivers where they were having a festival in Central Park
• Scenic Memorial Drive between Two Rivers and Manitowoc
• The Manitowoc Marina and Maritime Trail
• The car ferry, S.S. Badger, docking in Manitowoc
• The Wisconsin Maritime Museum and the submarine, USS Cobia
• Bernstein's Candy Store and ice cream shop
• West of the Lake Gardens

     We spent the evening swimming and talking at Fox Hills. Today we went up to Green Bay and drove by Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers National Football League team. I don't know if its because the Chicago folks are Bears fans or what but they chose to go shopping instead of visit the Packer's Hall of Fame. I have to admit the shopping was unique because we went to Fleet Farm. It has an eclectic mix of clothes, sporting goods, furniture and dairy farming supplies (get your udder wipes here). I think we all managed to make purchases. They returned to Chicago directly from Green Bay and we headed back to my sister's house. 
    We just plan to spend a quiet Memorial Day tomorrow. I will be visiting friends and relatives the rest of the week culminating in the graduation party on Saturday. Photos to come.

     Goodness, time just flies when one is retired. I thought I was only a few days behind in posting to my blog but now I see it's been over two weeks. Sorry!
     We just got back from watching a baseball game and it was such a beautiful night. It was 85 at game time but a light breeze was blowing and the sun was behind the clouds so it was very pleasant. Better yet our team, the AAA Louisville Bats, won the game. They even hit a home run out of the park (glad I didn't park my car on the street behind the field). All in all it was a very enjoyable evening.
     We've been on a movie kick lately. Last week we went to see Hot Tub Time Machine and The Bounty Hunter, both at the discount movie theater. The hot tub movie had several funny parts but the story was minimal. My husband thought the editing was poor. The Bounty Hunter was the better of the two movies but I was happier having only paid $2 to see it.
     On Saturday I was hanging out with friends as my husband went to his mother's house and we watched Leap Year on pay per view. I thought it was a very enjoyable movie but the Irish scenery alone was worth the price. Beautifully shot. Today I went to Letters To Julliette with (female) friends. Another very enjoyable movie this time with spectacular Italian scenery. Admittedly they were both chick flicks but if your man is not holding your hand by the end of the movie, he is really cold hearted.
     The other film we saw this week was a documentary about the Louisville Orchestra. It chronicles how the orchestra came up with a unique way to raise money back in the 1940's. It comissioned orchestral works from 20th century composers and then recorded them for sale. The record sales never took off as expected but the orchestra became famous throughout the world for originating new music. A solo dance by Martha Graham (the famous choregrapher) to a commissioned piece of music led to an appearance by the orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This led to Radio Free Europe using their recordings to broadcast behind the iron curtain as an example of what an American city could accomplish. This was at a time when Russian composers were restricted as to the types of music they could write. Later when a delegation of Russian composers came to the U.S. as part of detante, they insisted on visiting Louisville to see where the "new music" came from. The commisioned music was used as background music throughout the documentary and was performed by today's Louisville Orchestra. We found it very enjoyable, almost like going to a concert, especially so since we are long time subscribers to the orchestra. The name of the film is Music Makes The City.

     A couple more things...

     This is an ice plant. Last year I put 10 of these in my border but only two of them survived. One of them is blooming now. I think I might get some more and see how they do because they sure are cute.

    I am also experimenting with using planter boxes for my annuals instead of cutting holes in my weed block. I am trying to keep the weeds under control. I just planted them today using impatiens so let's see how they do this summer. I am hoping the flowers will fill out over the sides to hide the boxes somewhat.

     Last thing, here is my husband's latest project. He built a TV stand for our guest quarters. It's sized to fit our cable box and DVD. I think it turned out so good I want him to build one for our bedroom.

     It's a Sunday afternoon. Here in Louisville, the sun is shining beneath blue skies dotted with fluffy white clouds. It's deceptive because the temperature is only 55 - very chilly for us in mid-May. At least it is not raining. This area of the country has been experiencing flooding. Yesterday we drove to Owensboro in western Kentucky and saw a lot of flooding. We drove through Nashville last Monday which is only 3 hours south of here and the flooding there was extreme. We took some pictures through the car windows as we passed through. Many of the exits were closed and I can see why.

Trip To Pensacola, Florida

    We spent a very entertaining long weekend in Pensacola, Florida and Mobile, Alabama. We went with friends, one of whom is retired from the Navy, and were able to stay in the Navy Lodge on the Pensacola Naval Air Station. Our rooms overlooked the beach and Pensacola Bay.

Unfortunately the weather was rainy and foggy most of the time. The fog made an interesting perspective on the views. This is the Pensacola Light as seen from the balcony at the Navy Lodge.

   

    Our sightseeing consisted of three activities: air museum, WWII ships and forts. Our first day we spent at the Naval Aviation Museum right on base. The museum tracks the history of naval aviation from the earliest days until the present. This base is home to the Navy's air demonstration team, the Blue Angels. One gallery has a formation of Blue Angel planes suspended from the ceiling. There was also a very moving exhibit on POWs from the Vietnam War.

    The WWII ships were in Mobile, Alabama which is less than an hour from Pensacola. Battleship Park is the home of the retired battleship USS Alabama and the submarine USS Drum which was one of the few US submarines to make it from the start of the war through the end of the war.

The majority of each ship was open for touring but it's a lot of climbing and stepping over things to see it all. We went from the conning tower of the battleship to the conning tower of the submarine. You could even go inside the gun turrets of the battleship. They also have a small museum with aircraft and land vehicles.

   The forts were in the Pensacola area. The Pensacola Naval Air Station sits at the opening to Pensacola Bay across the water from two barrier islands. In the early 1800's the US built a triangle of massive brick forts to protect the entrance to the bay which had an important naval ship building yard.

Two of the forts remain, Fort Barrancas on the Naval Air Station and Fort Pickens on the end of Pensacola Beach. Fort Barrancas was built around an earlier Spanish fort. The only actual fighting the forts saw was during the Civil War when the Union held Fort Barrancas and the Confederates held Fort Pickens. The battles were stalemates meaning neither side controlled Pensacola harbor during the war. After the war, rifles and heavy guns replaced cannons and made the brick forts obsolete. Fort Pickens continued to be used and was upgraded during the Spanish American war in the late 1800's and again during WWII for coastal defense. German submarines did stalk our shipping in the Caribbean and off the Atlantic coast but ships provided a better defense than the forts.

    The road out to Fort Pickens follows a narrow barrier island with beaches on either side. The surf was pretty high that day and early that morning had gone over the roadway. They told us it was safe to drive through so we went ahead.

The sand is very white. A lot of people were out at the beach that day even though it was very windy and chilly. They wanted to see the white beaches before any oil washed ashore from the oil rig that exploded last week.

    One of the surprises for me was the excellent eating we had all weekend. We ate at McGuire's Irish Pub our first night and liked it so much we went back for more on our last night. The building and decor are well worth the trip itself but the food was fantastic! Specialty of the house is a bowl of Senate Bean Soup for 18 cents. Tradition is to write a note on a dollar bill and staple it to the wall (the wait staff carry pens and staplers for the purpose). The ceilings are dripping with dollar bills and they brag that they have well over half a million and still counting (they have to count the money once a year for tax purposes).

The next night we ate at the Oar House in a pouring rain. This place is a little hard to find since it's tucked past a residential area amoungst marine warehouses and docks. This is a place that relies on open air and outside dining so the rain moved the party indoors making for an ear-splitting din. The seafood was worth it and I would love to go back in balmier weather. Our other great dining experience in Pensacola was Peg Leg Pete's on the barrier island of Pensacola Beach. This was a shack with walls lined with licenese plates from every state and several foreign countries. We chowed down on oysters, crabs and shrimp - yum, yum! Our one day in Mobile we went looking for a restaurant my husband remembered from a trip he made there with his father years ago. We found the building but it is now a different restuarant. It seems Hurricane Katrina did a number on this area back in 2005; most of the businesses had closed up and a lot of buildings were still damaged and boarded up. The restaurant that moved into this building had itself left their original building because of the damage from Katrina. It was still the Original Oyster House though. They serve oysters in over a dozen different ways and every way we had them was delicious.