Tallahassee, Florida to Montgomery, Alabama - November 15 - 17, 2015

Tallahassee, Florida to Montgomery, Alabama - November 15 - 17, 2015

Tallahassee, Florida - November 15, 2015

Today is a travel day.  We are going about 200 miles up to Tallahassee.  We hope to get to the park in time to catch both the NASCAR race and the Seahawks game.  This is the second to last race of the year for NASCAR, racing in Arizona.  Seattle didn’t have a game last week so we are suffering from withdrawal.  They are playing Arizona too. 

As it turns out, watching the Seahawks was not as fun as we had expected.  They lost to Arizona 39 – 32.   Bummer!

It turns out that they also ran the NASCAR race, but we didn’t find it on the TV.  Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the race.

Montgomery, Alabama - November 16, 2015

Jason & Shana Jirik

It was another 200 mile day to Montgomery.  Bev was anxious to meet Shana Jirik, the manager of the park.  Shana is the daughter-in-law of Bev’s second cousin, Sally Maltais, who passed away in 2011.  Although, Bev has never met Shana or her husband, Jason, she had warned them that we were coming to Alabama, and wanted to take her & Jason to dinner.  To Bev’s delight, they were up for the visit. 

While Stan was getting the particulars on the RV sight, Bev was on the floor, playing cars with Jason’s two year old Grandson, Eden.  

We had a wonderful dinner at Sushi Yama, a Japanese Restaurant, and visited for over two hours.  It was a great visit. 

 

Jason "DJ Ziggy"

Jason is a disc jockey and radio personality, as well as flying helicopters, and planes. 

Montgomery, Alabama - November 17, 2015

Stan had spotted information on the Hank Williams Museum located in Montgomery.  We decided to spend at least part of the day visiting that.  It was well worth it. 

The museum was filled with Hank Williams memorabilia and had a wonderful film of the tribute to Hanks, by his son Hank Williams Jr.

“Hiram King "Hank" Williams, Sr. was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century, Williams recorded 35 singles that would place in the Top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart, including 11 that ranked number one.”

Hank died of a heart attack, at the age of 29, in the back seat of his Cadillac.  He had the disease, Spina Bifida.

“Spina bifida is a birth defect where there is incomplete closing of the backbone and membranes around the spinal cord.”  

Even thought he had surgery to correct the problem, he suffered a great deal of pain.  He turned to drugs and alcohol to overcome the pain. 

He was married to Audrey Mae Sheppard, who had daughter, Lycrecia, who he raised as his own, in addition to Hank Williams Jr.

A few blocks from the museum was the Hank Williams statue in the park.  Also, a short distance away was the cemetery where Hank & Audrey were buried.  We had to go visit and take pictures both places.

From there, we decided to go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner at 2:30 p.m.  We tried a local restaurant called Baumhower’s.  The food was fantastic, and the service was amazing. 

“It all started in 1981, Bob Baumhower, the All-American from the University of Alabama and six time All-Pro for the Miami Dolphins, decided to share his foodie passion and bring chicken wings to Alabama.”

We returned to the motorhome, exhausted, and played cards.  Jason had talked about taking a plane ride with him, but he had other things come up, which worked out just fine.  We needed to rest before starting out for Red Bay, Alabama, tomorrow.