2009-10 Winter Tana Tour, Road Kill Cafe & Spring Flowers, Elberta Alabama

Man and I have been hearing, you have to have lunch (buffet Man's FAV!!) out at the Road Kill Cafe.

We knew right where it was, because it was next door to my dentist down here, the one who fixed up that ole broken tooth I had back in November (2009).

So, today was the day, you have to be there by ohhhhh, 11ish, and they say the food is gone by noonish.  They cook "X" amount of food, and when it is gone, they close up and go home!  The eats were pretty good.  Chicken was outstanding! 

Their tshirts say something like, You kill it, we grill it!

After lunch we had a return visit to the Baldwin County Heritage Museum.  What a nice collection they have, and so well organized.  This time we went out the back door to see the school and church.  I was snapping photos and enjoying the sun and my day and the old stuff, and oh, oh, batteries on the camera, DOA.  Oh, well, Man, just looked at me and said, "guess we have to come back".  Yea!  Works for me.

But, before the battery crashed, I found some flowers:

Copyright 2010, CABS for Reflections From the Fence.
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2009-10 Winter Tana Tour, Elberta Alabama, Chili and The Second Glass of Lemonade

My readers may remember from my Fairhope Alabama post, that I have a life long goal to meet as many interesting people, my "Characters", as I can.  While making lemonade outta my lemons (the tooth saga) today, I got to meet not one, but TWO characters.  Met an awful lot of really nice and interesting people today, but these two stand out above the crowd.

After our delightful tour of the Elberta Hardware, we popped over the the Baldwin County Heritage Museum.  (Link did not work in January 2019, please use your browser search to locate their web page.)

We were greeted by Becky Holiday, Director and Odyssey Curator.  Becky is energetic, bubbly, talented, and deeply emotionally attached to this museum.  I was very impressed with her displays, they were artistic, not cluttery, very tasteful.  The collection of artifacts the museum has is impressive. There is a display of some fantastic folk art type quilt/wall hangings made by local stitchers, I believe the best I have ever seen. Here is just one small corner of the museum, one display that has been decorated for the holiday season.

We spied this great 1911 Evinrude boat motor.

Becky surely rates as a "Character", we will surely revisit this great museum, as we did not get to see it all today.  Besides, I cannot wait to chat with Becky again, she has LOTS of stories to tell!

After leaving bubbly Becky we went right back to the Elberta Hardware where they were sponsoring a Chili Cookoff, proceeds to charity.  Despite the chilly (oh oh I see a double entendre happening here) weather, the Chili was cooked, ready for sampling and voting for your favorite.  Some of the Chili was spicy, the 4H kids had one they called Taco Chili which had Frito chips, spicy chili mix, topped with cheese and sour cream.  Oh, yum!  My favorite was served up by Wolf Bay Lodge, Inc.  Somehow they made their chili creamy.  Man tried every chili offered.  I did not ask him to reveal his favorite.

The Wolf Bay Lodge crew, my second nomination for a "Character" is the beaming gal. She sparkled from top to bottom, and sadly, I have forgotten her given name.

Gotta say, Man and I had a grand time today, making lemonades outta lemons!  And the Chili was great too!

*There is a web site for Wolf Bay Lodge, but, it kinda froze up my computer, so, I have chosen not to link to it here on this post.

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2009-10 Winter Tana Tour, Elberta Alabama, Turning Lemons to Lemonade

Despite best planning and many dentist and doctor' visits prior to departure, things happen. In this case it is a broken tooth, Moi did it!  SIGH. Happened week of Thanksgiving, long story, in the short format:  Several phone calls to home dentist, insurance company, a bit of net surfing locating a local dentist that accepts said insurance, couple of hours later, dentist in Elberta pronounces that a crown is the fix.  They put a temp build up fix to get me through the holiday and appointment made for the next week to do the prep work.  Since we hope to be out here in Tana for a while, the temp build probably won't hold up to get us back to the home dentist.

So, they do the prep and put a temp crown on.  I am good for a few days, but --- popped off the temp crown late Thursday night. Oh, blast!  I had to wait till this AM to get that baby put back on.  Not the most comfy 36 hours I have spent, but, no pain pills were required, so you know it was not that bad!

Back to Elberta we go this AM, crown now back in place, discomfort subsiding, we decide to take in some local sight seeing and turn my tooth lemon into fun lemonade.

First stop:  Elberta Hardware.  This speciman was on the front porch.  I'll let you form your own opinions.

Man drug me to the back of the store, just had to show me what he claims is the best collection of lawn mower blades he has ever seen.  This is only half of the display, by the way.  Yepper, it is a Man thing!!

The building the Elberta Hardware resides in has a great history!  It contained a 2 lane duck pin bowling alley, it was a USO center and a dance hall.  You can tell (somewhat) from this photo, that this was the bowling alley portion of the building, LONG room!

And, someone had one of the old pins and the duck pin ball and gave them to the owners, aren't they great??

More about our Lemons to Lemonade, Elberta Alabama experience coming soon (OK - in the next blog post as soon as I can get it prepared.)

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