Thursday, June 24, 2010

THERE IS OIL ON THE BEACH AND WE DON’T MEAN SUNTAN OIL!

Tuesday, June 22 – Well, so much for beach plans......rain, rain, go away! We wanted to take advantage of these beautiful beaches before the oil ruins them but......RAIN! So what does any woman (Paul's traveling with two of them...three counting the cat) do when there's no alternative....SHOP! We're going to the Outlet Mall....yeah!!!!

Now that was a huge Tanger Outlet Center. Kelly seemed to find many things she's been looking for....even two more bathing suits.

After the Mall, we went over to Lambert's.....famous for the “Throwed Roll.” And Yes, they threw the rolls to us. There are only three locations…Sikeston, MO, Ozark, MO, and Foley, AL.

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The thrower

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The catcher

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All the food was delicious. The serving size was humungous...we carried most of our dinners home for tomorrow. It was Kelly's treat so that was nice!

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On this page, there are a lot of fun facts about the restaurant like…

Their ovens turn out rolls from 9:15 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. usually without stopping.  Last year they averaged baking 520 dozen rolls per day, for a grand total of 2,246,400 individual rolls.

Their rolls are 5 inches in diameter and if they laid all the rolls that they baked in one year side by side, they would have 177.27 miles of rolls. In the past 21 months they have baked enough rolls to reach 300 miles. That's the distance between St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee.

We then drove down to Gulf Shores beach. OMG...the oil was awful. It wasn't even present last evening, but it was all over today.

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It was so hot the tar balls were melting.

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Poor little sea shells.

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It even coated our feet from walking in the surf.

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We found some big piles of oil on the beach and you could see additional balls washing up all the time. This is really sad.

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Wednesday, June 23 – Well, we had a change in plans.....surprise, surprise...lol. We are not going to Augusta, GA to see Paul's brother. His brother is in New Hampshire on an assignment for work.

Sooooo, we decided to go to the beach today. It was a beautiful day for the beach.

Look how beautiful these waves look far away.

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Man, have things deteriorated oil spill wise since yesterday. The clean-up crews were out in a big way and so were the oil balls.

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The beach was a mess. I was amazed people were still going into the water. They had signs up and announcements on the radio, advising people to stay out of the water. People were even letting their children play in the water....YIKES!

This is what it looks like when the waves go out. See the tar balls left behind? How about the brown water?

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We had helicopters, and huge Coast Guard planes flying over head. Heavy equipment and numerous smaller pieces of equipment working on the beach and 100's of recovery workers.

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Kelly showing how the tar balls are melting in the heat.

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This is really something. Paul talked to one of the workers and he said they will work all day and all night to get this cleaned-up, but will probably have to start right over again. You could definitely see it getting worse and worse as the day went on. We can't see how they will ever get ahead of it.

When ever the waves came in, the oil was so plain to see. Look at the brown foam and then the color of the sand.

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After spending most of the day on the beach, we headed back to the MH for some relaxation time and to plan our new route to Ohio.

Thanks for stopping by. See y’all real soon.