Kitty, South Carolina, And A Rail Or Two

As you likely know, we have a cat, Kitty, whose job it is to keep the house free of mice and she is very good at it.  On this day, she sat on a chessboard without moving a man and peered out the window as though she was looking for her next victim.  She is wearing her pretty winter coat.

The weekend before Thanksgiving we drove Madison to Columbia SC to meet up with her parents so she could join them on a Caribbean cruise and since we couldn’t leave until after school on Friday, we only drove to Hendersonville, NC.  Early Saturday morning we drove south on I-26 where we shared the road with a lot of flag flying Gamecock fans headed to Columbia for their noon game.  Then on the way back we were among the Clemson Tiger fans headed for their 3:30 game we saw a first - we thought the USC fans had their vehicles adorned until we saw these:

These folks know how to adorn a car.

Speaking of college football, and sports in general, I hate that they have totally sold out to TV and the marketing that goes with it – I’m marketed-to-death and definitely not one who watches the Super Bowl for the commercials.  I love that we have a Direct TV system with a recorder so I can let the games get ahead then fast forward through the commercials and I can actually watch two games at the same time this way.  This sell out to TV has resulted in 60 minutes of football playing time taking around four hours – I can’t remember the last time I made it through an evening game, which is another sore point with me.

Playing early season games at night in the hot parts of the country makes total since to me, but playing on a 20*, snowy, Thursday night in Morgantown, WV when a much nicer Saturday afternoon is coming up is obviously all about the money.  But then again, are there many things that don’t seem to be about the money.

One last rail for those of you have been keeping up with the happenings in Ferguson, MO.  I thought justice was a jury of peers evaluating and discussing the evidence and making an informed decision, but for this event justice appears to be "getting the result I want" and it seems they are confusing justice with revenge.  Can you imagine burning down your community store because you are angry about something else - is our society this fragile - makes me think I should watch "Doomsday Preppers” more seriously.

Thanks for letting me get these two off my chest now let's go record some football games for Friday and Saturday.

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Have a great day and, as always, thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

A Cabin In The Mountains – Final Day - Model RR

We awoke Sunday morning to a cold rainy day, instead of the snow I was hoping for but we had a good plan for part of the day.  We waited until late morning to eat and headed over to LaCosta MexicanRestaurant for lunch.  They are rated well on the web and it’s obvious the place is popular as it soon filled up with the after church crowd.  It’s located in a strip mall and decorated very tastefully.

Bev ordered one of the usual combo meals and I had a craving for fajita’s but we started with the normal chips and salsa and a very good margarita.

This is shot of my fajita plate and the lighting made the steak look like chicken – I also had another plate with rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole, and salad.

We both thought our meals were very good and the service was excellent – we would definitely go there again.  With the two retirement/tourist communites, the state park, and other tourist draws, Crossville seems to have many more restaurants than most towns it's size.

After eating, we headed over to the Crossville Outlet Mall where Bev shopped a little and I visited the Crossville Model Railroad Club’s display located in the same building.  As a child in the 50’s who grew up with toy trains with a best friend who's father was a RR engineer, I became a model railroader and railfan in general.  I was very impressed with what this 50 member club had accomplished.  

They had a layout in each of the Z, N, HO, O, and G scales.  This is a shot (from the web) of the various sizes.  From the left, they are Z, N, HO, S (American Flyer), O (Lionel) and G scale (gauge).  O scale at 1:22 of real life and ten times larger than Z scale at 1:220 of real life.  You train enthusiasts will recognize the paint scheme as the Santa Fe Railroad's War Bonnet.

Of the clubs five layouts, the HO one is very large and the following shots are of it.  The first one is the total four section layout and the next two are of section two and three.  The layout is computer controlled to the point that they can run the trains with their cell phones. 

These are some shots of the sections I thought were interesting.

I gave all of my model RR stuff to my grandson last year in hopes that he and his dad might take up the hobby – hint, hint.

We once again ate our lunch leftovers for supper and decided with the yucky weather and uncomfortable bed and couch in the cabin, we would cut our stay a day short and head back down into the valley.  While the rustic cabin was pretty much what I was expected, I was disappointed in the condition of the furnishings and the general cleanliness of it.  While I might give one of their more modern cabins a try, I would not recommend the rustic ones at Cumberland Mountain State Park.

However, it was nice to get away with just my honey and the little trip did help de-stress us some.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL

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Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

11/16/14 event date

A Cabin In The Mountains – Day 3

The entrance road to Cumberland Mountain State Park crosses the man made dam and bridge which is pretty awesome as seen in these two shots from the web and our shot from the bridge as we headed out to lunch.

While the park is only about 40 miles west of home (as the crow flies), we changed time zones and so it gets dark there almost a full hour earlier and we learned something the previous day.  By the time our normal suppertime rolls around, we have no desire to leave the warm cabin and go out to eat, which explains yesterday’s evening meal, so we made a different plan.  For our main meal this day, we headed out to Genesis Italian Grille for lunch and each ordered a plate of the spaghetti and meatballs that we had both been craving.

We got there about 11:15 so the place was still pretty empty but since this was breakfast we were hungry by this time.

Genesis was ranked in the top ten by the various restaurant raters and we thought it was pretty good and probably very good for most Tennessee eaters, but since I was raised on great Italian food, I’m a little fussy about it.  I thought the sauce was a little sweet for my taste, but I add zero sugar to mine and we both thought the meatballs were better than most.  The service was very good so I’d say it was an overall good dining experience and I would go back if I had another Italian craving.  As a bonus, we each brought home about half our meals so we had plenty for supper – no need to go back out in the dark – I might have to stay on DST if I lived here.

After lunch, it was back to the cabin, build a fire and watch college football – we noticed there were many more cabins occupied for the weekend.

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Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

11/15/14 event date

A Cabin In The Mountains – Day 2

We began our first full day on the Cumberland Plateau by going to Sister’s Café in Crossville for brunch as it came highly recommended and it was my favorite kind of place – a hole-in-the-wall serving good home cooking to the locals.

I had a very good, but not photo worthy, basic breakfast meal and Bev had a hot roast beef sandwich which I only remembered to shoot after she started eating, but the best shot was the homemade coconut cream pie, which we just had to try.

Bev’s meal and the pie were also both very good and we took half of both to go.

After breakfast, we headed south on US-127 and soon left the Cumberland Plateau and dropped into the Sequatchie Valley which is a beautiful long narrow valley and home to some large cattle operations.  I didn’t get any shots so I lifted these from the web.

Just north of the state park lies Crossville. TN which bills itself as the Golf Capital of Tennessee due mostly to Fairfield Glade and Lake Tansi Village both of which began as vacation resorts but now have mostly full time residents and many retirees.  I’d been to Fairfield Glade a few times but wanted to check out Lake Tansi as we headed back to the state park.  While we saw real farming operations down in the valley, back up on the plateau and near Lake Tansi, we came across several gentlemen farms and got these shots.

I didn’t get any shots of Tansi, so here are a few from the web.

This really is a beautiful area and I understand why it is popular.  After our drive, we went back to the cabin, built a nice fire, and piled up for the rest of the day – had our leftovers from Sisters, cheese and crackers, and wine for supper – perfect.

All-in-all a nice relaxing day of doing pretty much nothing – it’s a rough job but someone has got to do this kind of work.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

11/14/14 event date

A Cabin In The Mountains

I really needed to get away from it all, so rather than make the RV trip south with two women and four dogs, I elected to book a cabin in Cumberland Mountains State Park for just Bev and I and we left Madison and the dogs in the hands of our house sitter.  As it turned out, this trip matched up with the arrival of the cold snap that moved into the area and the temperature dropped five degrees from the valley floor (where we live) as we went up on the Cumberland Plateau – the Cumberland mountains are the southern name for the same range called the Allegheny’s in the North and along with the Blue Ridge (and Smoky’s) to the east of the valley and some others in New England, they make up the Appalachian Mountains.  The state park lies just a few miles south of Crossville, TN along US-127.

I reserved a one bedroom, rustic cabin with a wood burning fireplace thinking it would be nice to pile up in front of the fire, do some blogging, and hope for snow.  This is my shot of the cabin outside and some of the inside from the park’s website.

The cabins are nestled in the woods with plenty of space between them but it soon became evident that this was a summertime park as we found only four cabins occupied in the entire cabin area containing 37 rustic and modern cabins.  While it had everything we needed to live, ours was definitely a rustic cabin, had been there for several years, and could stand a few improvements such as weather stripping around the door to reduce the drafts – I could see light around the door, which is not good in sub-freezing weather.  This is the cabin area around us and I can imagine it being very pretty with leaves on the trees.

This one of the modern cabins.

One of the things I promised Bev was that we would do very little cooking to minimize kitchen clean-up, which she usually does, and even though she just got home from two weeks at a condo in Marco Island I wanted this trip to be as stress and work free as possible for both of us. The first night, we ate dinner at the park restaurant where they provide a buffet for $9.25 and they had a pretty good crowd for a Thursday night.  They had a good salad bar and even though the hot food was about what you would expect from a state park, we still managed to eat too much - I hate buffets as I always believe I have to try some of everything and to get my money’s worth.  The restaurant building is very nice and sits on the lake with that side all glass.

And the best parts for Bev – no one was calling her name, no dogs were demanding her attention, and she got to stay in bed every day until ready to get up.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

11/13/14 date

A Southern Breakfast & Sandwich Experiment

For those of you who know Bev is in Florida and may be worried about me surviving, fear not.

Two fresh-from-a-local-farm eggs, Benton’s country ham, and Bev’s homemade biscuits from the freezer.  After I took the shot, I split the biscuits, cut the tomato in half and added them and some country ham to get two delicious breakfast sandwiches sided with scrambled eggs.  It got the day started right and lasted me til supper – I just love breakfast.

Tomato and Cottage Cheese Sandwich - A Few Days Earlier

I like tomatoes, I like sandwiches, I like tomato sandwiches, I like tomatoes and cottage cheese, so why not combine them me thinks.  I had what was the last tomato from this year’s plants and decided on cottage cheese and tomato for breakfast, then thought I should have some carbs and considered a piece of toast.  It was at this point that a brilliant idea popped into my head, why not a tomato and cottage cheese sandwich, especially since I had a fresh loaf of French bread.

I sliced the bread and added the sliced tomato with S&P.

I added a nice layer of my favorite Breakstone's Cottage Cheese with more S&P.

Add the top piece of bread and wa-la a sandwich is born.

So how was it you ask – pretty much as expected flavor-wise and much of the cottage cheese ended up on the plate, also as expected.  I’m not sure this is the sandwich I’d serve for a brunch J  so maybe not quite a brilliant idea - next time, I’ll try it open faced on hot pepper cheese toast.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry