the marathon.........

You asked for it! well.........you agreed to it.........so here goes...........

We left just after 7:00 a.m. heading south-west to a smaller city named Demopolis, south of Tuscaloosa. While the whole state is "Tide" country......we were driving into the heart of it....

I knew beforehand we would be going through this town........can you guess the name?

Maybe this is the phonetic spelling of Utah? (It definitely is "Utah" because I heard it on the weather report the day before......when the weather man almost promised no rain for a week--and it's rained every afternoon since!! Thank goodness 'cause it cools things down some.)

This house just caught my eye.......no significance...........

........and here is some really fun "yard art" in a big way? 

 This is the back of this house.......maybe that's obvious. We didn't drive around to the front. I imagine it is vacant, but I love the way the trumpet vine has spread it's beauty as best it could. And that old brick chimney with the rusting roof........kind of nostalgic......I can almost hear the rain on the roof of the old chicken coop!! And here the rain thunders down!!!!! 

We found the Elders in Demopolis--one from Utah and one from California.....nice young men who needed a new lock on the trunk (it wouldn't stay closed) and a new tiwi. (You are going to be hearing more about these little ______________ you fill in the blank. I can only imagine what some of the missionaries have called them. But they are making a HUGE difference in safety.) They gave us a welcomed drink of ice water, a warm handshake, bade us thanks and good-bye, and drive safely. It was somewhere around 11:30 (I think) and we headed east........toward Selma and Montgomery...........

The land was flatter and we began seeing ponds of water........my only guess was catfish farms--which proved to be correct!

  So we stopped for a closer look.......... There were cranes or egrets--don't know which--all around too. Smart birds!

 They also didn't cooperate very well.........I wanted a closer picture, but they were pretty skittish.

 

This "contraption" is used to stir and aereate the water. I thought they "traveled" across the pond, but then, again, I wonder. We saw one churning, and I remember our friend, Ed, in Arkansas, telling us catfish farming can be tricky due to aereation and temperature........I'd love to learn more..........(there were more birds I would have loved to photograph, but we were hardly 1/2 way through the marathon)


Shortly after this, we stopped to eat............and ..........decided we had to have some catfish! I've had it before, with afore-mentioned Ed and his wife Joan.....AND.......they deep fry it......AND......they also had salmon on the menu (who can eat catfish when there is salmon around????) so I had salmon and Roger had catfish. I'm withholding final judgement to give it another try, but it is a very soft fish (catfish) and I struggle some with that.......we'll see........... I've had better salmon, so maybe there is better catfish as well...........

We traveled between Selma and Montgomery on the road used by Martin Luther King and those who walked with him to the capitol. I tried to imagine thousands of people walking that distance with a purpose............and it is beautiful country.........fields of corn, cotton, and some kind of bean......and, of course, the trees........I also thought of Charles Ingalls and how he fought to keep the trees out of his fields. The fight continues!

I must have got tired, or something.............or things weren't as interesting........... In Wetumpka--a little east and north of Montgomery--they were having some sort of arts festival at the "city center". The Elders were "contacting" at WalMart and had told us the area of the parking lot where they left the car......we found it! (Roger had brought the extra keys from the office preparing for just such a contingency) so he replaced the tiwi, re-set it, took it for a test drive, locked the car and we left in search of the Sisters because we were also delivering mail. They were downtown at the festival when we finally found them............they were harder to find than the car in the parking lot! But so happy to get their letters, happy to see us, and glad to know the tiwi was fixed. They share the car with the Elders. Leaving Wetumpka was an experience!!!! The GPS directed us to something only a little better than a paved track winding through the trees--a couple of blocks from the very middle of "downtown"! But low and behold!!!! It came out to the highway!! This time the destination was Alexander City...........smaller again............

Look what we found!!!!! (and I was the one who spotted them........we had to turn around and go back for the picture and so Roger could see them.......they looked so pretty all white in all the green)

The Talla...........something river............this is something else I was not prepared for......don't know why, we have rivers "all over" Utah, but these are so big!!!! I guess I just had not thought about there being so much water..............just didn't think..............

We found the Sisters......one from Las Vegas and the other from Firth, Idaho! She was impressed that I knew about Shelly, Idaho........anyway..........Roger changed the tiwi in their car too, and they gave us another very welcomed drink of ice water, which, by the way, tasted really good. Alexander City is a small city--population about like Delta but more spread out.......and we found people putting out luminaries along "main street" (which looked more like "the highway" to me) but I almost wished we could stay and drive through after dark. They had hundreds of luminaries......a trailer the size of ours about 1/2 full. I don't know the occasion or anything, neither did the Sisters........

We were tired and "home" sounded really good, so we thankfully headed north.

........to the hills.........

................and home...............arrived 7:15 p.m.