It Was Our Lucky Day!

 

Blairsville, GA – Rivers Edge Rv Park (high 78, low 64)

 

We are still marveling at this cool weather.  We can’t quite believe how much nicer it is here than it was in Tampa, and we spend as much time outside as possible.

We were up early yesterday morning as usual, trying to fit everything into these very short days.  We run out of day before we run out of things we want to do. 

We spent the morning visiting some friends around the park, then sent our friends Terry and Ralph off to Babyland in Cleveland, GA for a trip to the Cabbage Patch. They had an appointment to adopt some Cabbage Patch kids for their granddaughters.  I’ll post some pictures tomorrow of their new family members.

 

By this time we were hungry, so we went into town for some lunch at Monte Alban, our favorite Mexican restaurant.

After lunch, we went to Ingles grocery store.  It’s the nicest grocery store we’ve ever been in, which is surprising, because Blairsville is a very small town.  We enjoyed looking around the store and finding all the hard to find things that we like and can’t find at most groceries.

Do you remember a blog post a few months ago where Al tried some free samples at a local Whole Foods store in Tampa and got food poisoning?     I thought we had agreed no more free food samples when they were left laying out.

So…..guess what he did yesterday?    Yes, he did.  He is like a hunting dog on a scent, when there is free food around.   As soon as I reminded him of the food poisoning episode, he remembered he wasn’t supposed to eat things like that.  Al, Al, Al……..    So far, so good.

 

As we were wandering around Ingles, I remembered a recent blog post Merikay wrote where she had been searching for some unusual food products.  She was happy to have found walnut oil, and oyster mushrooms.  I decided to see if Ingles would live up to her expectations and have those two items (which I had never heard of before).

Guess what I found?

Right next to the Walnut oil were a few other interesting oils.

I’m not sure exactly what you would do with any of these oils, but maybe Merikay will chime in and give us some ideas.

 

The other thing she mentioned was oyster mushrooms.  Guess what I found?

 

and how about these?   Do they taste like lobster, I wonder?

 

So, Merikay, did Ingles pass the test?   I think you’ll like the store when you get here this fall. 

 

As we wandered around Ingles, I was admiring the nice bags of frozen okra and butterbeans, wishing I had room in my small Rv freezer.   Al reminded me we have a big residential refrigerator here in the cabin.  Well, it’s not exactly a big by home standards, but by Rv standards it’s pretty big!   I grabbed some okra and butterbeans, and was also able to take advantage of a buy one, get one free deal on frozen blueberries.   It is nice having more room for this kind of thing.

 

We spent the longest time browsing around Ingles like kids at Disney World.  As we were getting ready to leave, I was paying, and Al walked over to buy a scratch off lottery ticket.

As we walked out, he was scratching the ticket as I was pushing the cart.  He said,  “I think I just won $100,” and then “No, I think, I just won $10”,  then,  “no, I think it’s $100”   I think he was just too excited to look at it carefully enough, so he just walked over to cash it out and see what he had actually won.   

Here he is when he came back with his loot.   It was indeed $100 and he was a happy camper.

So, a prudent person would take the $100 and enjoy it right?   We weren’t so prudent and decided it might be our lucky day, so we took the cash right back in and bought a couple more tickets.  I bought a $5 scratch off ticket which was a loser.  Al gambled big and bought a $10 scratch off ticket which believe it or not was another $100 winner!

So, he won $200 off of two scratch off tickets!   Way to go Al.  

 

We spent the rest of the day putzing around outside.  I planted some more of the flowers and Al did a little metal detecting, trying to find a survey pin showing where our lot line is located.

The birds have once again found our bird feeders and we’ve enjoyed watching them.  It appears we have a family of juvenile Cardinals.  It’s amazing how many birds are in this area.

We have a few goldfinch.  We had a lot of them last year, so we’re hoping more will come.

We have at least two hummingbirds, but I haven’t gotten any pictures of them just yet.

We have a neighbor that has a LOT of bird feeders on his lot.  He keeps them full and the birds are quite happy.  It is not easy to lure them away and it took us quite a while last year.  This year, we had the same problem.  The birds hung out at his place and ignored our feeders.  This year, it only took  a few days for the birds to find our feeders again. We provide the “good stuff” so once they discover our tasty treats, they tell their friends.

We buy shelled sunflower seeds at Wal-Mart, and all the birds LOVE it, including gold finch. No messy shells laying on the ground and there is no waste.  Anything that falls on the ground is quickly taken care of by doves or some other ground feeder.

We’re not sure what we will do today.  We may get rain, so I guess we’ll see. We have a big week-end planned, providing there is no rain.