Our January Trip to Louisiana-Part 2

Read about Part 1 HERE.

So January 2nd saw us rising and shining in partly sunny coastal Alabama at Lorraine and Chris' house.
Chris had to work that day but Lorraine was on school break from her lunch lady job so we did a little sightseeing.

First it was off for a short walk.  We took a trail near Village Point Park to see a guy about a tree.........

It's a really BIG oak tree!  See that speck in yellow to the right of the tree?  That's Lorraine.

This tree is known as the Jackson's Oak.  It's 95 feet tall and 28 feet in circumference. It was notable even back in the 1700's as it was a survey marker in an old Spanish Land Grant map from 1787.

What I can gather, during the War of 1812, in 1814 specifically, after General Andrew Jackson and his troops drove the British out of the Pensacola area of Florida(Florida was Spanish Territory then, with coastal Louisiana, the Mississippi Territory-which also encompassed present day Alabama-and Western Florida-the Panhandle including Pensacola-were disputed territory between the US and Spain),

Jackson and his men bivouacked in this grove of oak trees before heading to New Orleans(and the Battle of New Orleans).
Gen. Jackson is said to have climbed into this oak tree so as to address and give his men a rousing speech before the march forward West to NOLA.

It's near impossible to get a goodly amount of Jackson's Oak into a camera shot it's so massive, much like the Angel Oak we visited in South Carolina last Spring.  I tried to get a shot into the canopy of the tree but without any leaves(it was Winter when I took this)it wasn't so great a picture but you do see a lot of the silvery moss draped on it's impressive branches.
I'd like to see the Jackson Oak again but in full foliage. ;-)

Anyway, after seeing the tree we trotted back to the parking lot but not before passing a woman with her dog, who asked us if we belonged to that Fiat parked back in the lot.  Yes, it was Lorraine's car(which she loves by the way!)and those two struck up a conversation.  Seems that woman needs/wants to buy a car and was pumping Lorraine for information on her particular model.  I hope that woman got some good pointers and made a good car buying decision when it was all said and done. ;-)

Next up Lorraine drove us to see another guy about a church and it's property. 
This is where Chris works.  He is the head groundskeeper of a local Catholic Church. 
And wouldn't you know it, where he works is the same name as the church and porochial school I attended in Virginia as a child.
We drove by lots of land the church owns....church, chapel, rectory, school, fields for various sports.....there was a LOT of buildings and land this church owns.  And Chris is the only groundskeeper, which seems like a lot of work for one person to me!  If you know the Monsignor there, tell him Chris deserves a raise. ;-)

After stopping at the equipment shed and saying "Hey!" to Chris as he ate his lunch, we were off again to see another Wonder of the Area.

But this wasn't a Natural Historical Wonder but a Modern one............

A Buc-ee's gas station/convenience store in Baldwin County Alabama.  Said to be the "Disneyland of Convenience Stores" it was the first Buc-ee's built outside of Texas(and opened on my birthday in 2019).
Built off the Baldwin Beach Expressway it's a must stop on the way to Pensacola FL I hear and everyone for 50 miles must have been in that store the day we were there! lolz

We did use the restrooms since they are suppose to be amazingly clean and then we browsed around.

Me in front of the "Wall of Jerky".   Or you could say just another jerk by the jerky. lolz

Leg Lamp shirts that McVal would have scarfed up had she been there.....plus they were on SALE!lolz

Southern saying pillows and mugs because we are in the South.

 And then there were funny saying t-shirts with a Southern theme.

And then funny signs about pets.

Now I didn't even take photos of....all. the. food. and. drink.
Canned/bagged/bottled as well as freshly cooked.  The smells in that place were amazing and mouth watering.
But we resisted, I only  bought the bumper sticker and chap stick in the photo 7 back. 

We hopped on over to a place called the "Mellow Mushroom" for lunch.........

Here I am with the Mellow Mushroom man.  Gotta get my funny touristy photos in, right?

I heard about this regional chain from a young blogger I use to read/follow who lived in Eastern Tennessee(she no longer blogs).  She and her hubs are vegan and this was a hipster place they liked to eat at.

And here is Lorraine outside of their "Flushrooms". lolz

And here's the pizza Hubs and I shared for lunch there.  We had ordered a pizza called "Holy Shitake" but they were out of mushrooms for it(I find that so ironic......the place is called the Mellow Mushroom and they had no mushrooms*snort*).
So we punted and got the "Funky Q. Chicken", a pie with bbq chicken, mozzarella and cheddar cheese, caramelized onions, Applewood smoked bacon and finished with a bbq sauce swirl.
While I would have preferred the Holy Shitake(as Churches and shrines seemed to be the theme of the day)the Funky Q. Chicken hit the spot.

Then it was off again to see a guy about another church..........but you'll have to wait for that piece in Part 3.

Sluggy