I Moved!

I made it to Louisiana last Sunday. It took me over a week to get settled in because my room wasn’t quite finished when I got here. I spent the first few days helping finish that. I primed and painted the walls and hung blinds. The rest has been getting the extra stuff I have in storage and unpacking. Buddy was a good boy on the long drive down. I gave him some medicine from the vet that helps with motion sickness so I think he may have been a little bit tired from that.

This Sunday I went to my friend Paula’s daughter’s cheer competition that was held at the River Center in downtown Baton Rouge. The team got first place in their level. We also went to lunch and did a little bit of sightseeing along the Mississippi Riverfront. I snapped some photos with my iPhone.

View of Mississippi River from Baton Rouge

Baton Rouge Shoreline

USS KIDD rests in a unique docking system designed for the near forty foot rise and fall of the river each season. Half of the year, she rides the currents of the Mississippi; the other half, she sits dry-docked in a cradle where visitors can see her full dimensions.

Impromptu Road Trip

I had planned to do an iPhone Post but the WordPress app wouldn’t upload and now I can’t figure out how to delete the draft post. I took some pics with the iPhone camera but the WordPress app gave me an invalid image error when I tried to upload the post. So I don’t know. I am disappointed. What’s the point of the app if I can’t post on the go?

My friend Sue and I drove up to Grafton. Today was one of those days that was sunny, partly cloudy, dark, gray and rainy. Just depended what time it was and where you happened to be.

Halo effect produced using the Camerabag app for iPhone

The weather was fine when we got up to Grafton. This town lies on the river’s edge on a mountain side. Sue wanted to drive through some of the “neighborhoods.” I was a little relunctant. I told her I wasn’t really into the whole Deliverance experience. I said if it starts rockin’ the weird-shit-o-meter we are turnin’ around! Seriously though, it’s a gorgeous. The bluffs along the Mississippi are breathtaking. This area boasts some of the most spectacular views of the river valley.

We stopped for lunch but I won’t say where because it was awful and it tore up my stomach. Suffice it to say, I won’t be going back there. If for some reason I do (like I’m riding Sea-Doos on the river) I’ll make sure I only order one of the frozen appetizers that gets dropped into the fat fryer. Can’t really screw that up. We headed back down towards Alton and that’s when the weather turned stormy.

At first it was just a light sprinkling of rain

Roadside construction gets rained out

That turned into a pretty decent downpour. Apparently flooding this past spring/summer washed out parts of the road bed.

Gray day on the Mississippi

So we headed to Alton. About 8 or 9 years ago, we can’t even remember, Sue and I took a “haunted tour” of Alton and one of the stops was the McPike Mansion. We stopped by today and it looked exactly the same as I remembered it. Right down to the chairs out front.

McPike Mansion - Alton, IL

It was short a road trip. I wanted to get back to Buddy. He just had his neuter surgery on Tuesday so he is still recuperating. Doin’ good though. He is getting so big…11 lbs. and 1/2 oz.

Fall Is My Favorite Season

Fall is my favorite time of the year to jump in the car and hit the road. I love how everything looks this time of year and the weather is so nice.

Monkeys at the Falls!

Pretty awesome spot for a dip in the water. But I don’t know that I’d want to have to climb up the rope to get out of the water.

More Boston Photos

I just brought a cheap disposable camera…no zoom, no bells & no whistles. Fortunately my travel companions brought their digital cameras.

Lori’s Pictures

 McDonald’s in Chinatown

Boston Harbor

Sailboat in the Harbor

Sherry’s Pictures

That’s a lot of poo…

Sailboat in the Harbor

Battleship moored at the Quincy Harbor Express dock

Boston or Bust!

I just returned from a week in Boston on Friday evening. I went there for software training and stayed at a hotel in Randolph, MA. If you stay in that part of greater Boston I highly recommend the Lynwood Cafe for a great pizza! Anyone who knows me knows that pizza is one of my favorite foods and I am always on a quest to experience the best of the best. This was different and quite delicious. They only offer one size pie, I’d say it was about 10 inches. But I ate almost the whole thing, rich as it was, it was so good! We went Tuesday night and there wasn’t a table open. We were asked to place our order anyway and you should have seen the piles of TO GO orders. It was ridiculous. I did make the comment that this is every restaurant’s dream for a Tuesday night (or any night). Did I mention they only accept cash?? Good for them.

Other good eats I tried were: Birch Street Bistro (yummy, I had the swordfish special with scallops) and Chart House (a chain, same one that owns Landry’s, but the crab cake was fabulous and my only complaint about the key lime pie is the slice was too big, it’s rich and I don’t want to leave a nice meal feeling guilty over what is going in the garbage).

We took a shuttle from the airport when we arrived just a short distance to the Harbor Express. The ferry took us on a ride through the harbor to Quincy where the hotel sent a shuttle to pick us up. This was totally superior to taking the highway in a cab. Thanks Lori!! Good job girl!

As soon as we reached Quincy it became painfully obvious that you would be wise to just pay the extra for the covered parking. The picture is a bit grainy because I didn’t want to be a complete ass and walk right up and take a picture while the people were loading their bags. They’d suffered enough I’d say. And yes, that is bird $#!&. By the way the pidgeons in Boston are as big as fat house cats and one totally flew right into my HEAD while I was walking down Washington to Chinatown. I was like, “How rude!! Thanks for the memories!”

The interesting glass tower sculptures below were located near the Union Oyster House. We didn’t stop and eat there but they had their windows open. They aren’t like windows at restaurants in other places I’ve been. The are like “out swing” french doors. Except they fold in towards the inside of the restaurant. There are no screens. Very cool. It was really neat to see them open to the outside on a lovely day. And many of the downtown taverns had the same style windows.

Some thing else I thought was different was the fact that Boston has cementaries right downtown. I think other places must build on top of the cementaries because I’ve never noticed anything like this anywhere else that I’ve been. Another indication of how old this town actually is.