By Mark Darnell, on April 24th, 2007%
We loaded up the family this past weekend and headed for Stone Mountain Park. It’s about 20 miles east of the I-285 perimeter on U.S. Highway 78, if you’re driving that direction you can’t miss it – it’ll be the great big bald rock on the side of the road. Camping there was a great experience – the woods were so thick I couldn’t even open the camper’s canopy completely. The space we were given had a nice little stone-walled area that was great for our little girl to play around on while staying out of the road and out of danger. The space was also really close to the lake where we were able to see a lot of wildlife as well as many tour boats and some interesting amphibian craft in action all day. Click here to enter the gallery.
Continue reading Stone Mountain Georgia
By Mark Darnell, on April 16th, 2007%
As spring arrives each year you’ll see the lots of Lower Alabamians bringing out the gas boiler, the biggest boiling pot it will safely hold, various vegetables, all sorts of secret spice combinations, and sometimes even other meats such as sausage to have a crawfish boil. I’ve seen everything from mushrooms to garlic to bell peppers boiled in the pot along with corn and potatoes with the “mud bugs†to lend flavor to these miniature lobster-looking ditch-dwellers and the outcome is always the same – a great tasting food for any occasion. Any occasion that allows for making a mess anyway! A crawfish boil is a pretty messy event because it’s a “hands on†eating experience. You’ll end up with fingers the same color as the boil and the discarded crawfish parts left over from getting the meat out of the tails pile up rather quickly. Seems like a lot of work to get just a little bit of food but it’s worth it once you figure out how to do it quickly.
Continue reading Another favorite Lower Alabama pass-time
By Mark Darnell, on April 15th, 2007%
Taking advantage of great weather, three friends and I took a tour of the USS Alabama battleship and USS Drum at Battleship Park this past weekend. We took all three tours of the battleship as well as climbed and crawled to everywhere possible then toured the USS Drum which has been MASSIVELY restored since it was pulled out of Mobile Bay and put to rest on dry land. The aircraft pavilion is still closed from the damage sustained during hurricane Katrina; most of the aircraft (although some damaged) are in the parking lot outside the pavilion now. Click here to see the pictures taken during this outing.
By Mark Darnell, on April 11th, 2007%
For the third consecutive year the Harbor Communications chili cooking team was at it again. The American Cancer Society and Mobile Gas put this thing on each year and it’s a great excuse for teams like ours to have a good time as well as Lower Alabamians and LoDa to get together for a great time on a Saturday. I know… a chili cookoff hosted by the municipal GAS department sounds like a accident waiting to happen but it was beautiful day with perfect weather for the occasion. For pictures, click here.
By Mark Darnell, on April 11th, 2007%
The Knights of Ecor Rouge parade kicked off in great weather. Clear skies with no rain in sight, a good time was had by all. Watching and listening as the floats made it into the first street with the crowds screaming was nothing less than breathtaking. From toddlers to senior citizens, thousands were there with arms outstretched to catch whatever trinket that might be thrown their way. Click here for highlights of the floats as they came by several locations.
By Mark Darnell, on April 11th, 2007%
We made our yearly pilgrimage with the kids to Bellingrath Gardens to see the lights. This year wasn’t cold however it was extremely foggy causing entirely too much haze for many of the pictures to be effective. I was also trying a lot of different settings on the camera which didn’t help also. I got a few shots inside the buldings which turned out wonderful. Each photo is HQ JPG at 3008×2000. The image (file) size was greater than the settings for the MySQL database behind the G2 software would allow so these are uploaded to the flat-file G1 gallery. Click here to see the pictures.
Comments are closed 
