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We’ve been here long enough to get off the plane, get our rental car and check into our hotel.
The guy at Hertz called me broke and the girl at the hotel called me old.
But the scenery is beautiful! More, in a bit, from our first adventure of the trip.
Spent a few hours in the plane, departing from Atlanta and arriving in Portland. This is Mt. Hood, just before we touched down.
We lost three time zones and about 30 degrees on this flight.
No one is complaining about this last part.
And now for your amusing miscommunication of the day: “Come over have dinner at Our Place.”
The thing you don’t hear in the conversation are the capital letters. Our Place is not “We’re making a casserole,” but rather, “There is a nice little restaurant nearby that we like to frequent and we would enjoy your company. The name of the establishment is Our Place.”
So we drive to Wetumpka, in the original Creek it meant Rumbling Waters because the river roared over waterfalls. Now it is damned. When the Creek were moved west, they named a town in Oklahoma Wetumka. Wetumka is even smaller than Wetumpka. I learned this on Wikipedia, which may be wrong, because we discussed this evening the very idea of falsifying information on Wikipedia. But let’s just go with it. Did you know there’s a full-sized replica of Olympia’s Temple of Hera? Did you know Wetumpka was once compared to Chicago and no one laughed?
Wetumpka has about 5,000 people in it today, but they’re still trying. They also lost out on being the state capital because a hotel in nearby Montgomery hired a fancy French chef. And in the middle of the 19th century that won votes.
Anyway. Our Place is a nice little joint. It gets four stars on Urban Spoon, five stars on Yahoo, four on Trip Advisor and three stars on Yelp.
I was all set to give the Yelpers grief over their average rating — why so low? — and just noticed that only one person has reviewed it. Don’t make a special trip, says Jesse the Doberman. Jesse’s profile lists Birmingham as home. If they drove down just for Our Place I see the point. For a nice quiet place, though, it is delightful.
Turns out it was a car shop back in the 1930s or so. After years of cars and, I’m guessing, little of anything else, someone bought it with the idea of making it a music-themed restaurant. This was, we were told, poorly done from the start and the Our Place people stepped in and reaped the benefits. They serve a quasi-New Orleans menu and all the plates were enjoyable. I had the Shrimp Dianne. Got a plate full of pasta and shrimp and veggies and cheese. You cannot go wrong with this formulation.
(If I’d known Our Place wasn’t our place, though, I would have worn something nicer than jeans. Sorry, guys.)
Ahh. I found some incorrect information on Wetumpka’s Wikipedia page. I know who to blame.
We have Fourth of July traditions. We go to Dreamland, enjoy the ribs, take a photo and watch fireworks.
So it is a mosaic, a history of summers well spent. The most recent, in the bottom right corner, is at the Montgomery restaurant. This is the first year we’ve not done this particular shot at the Birmingham Dreamland.
Jerry Katz suggested Opelika’s annual “Freedom Celebration” as a nice way to spend Friday evening. Head out to Opelika High School and extend the Fourth of July holiday a bit. It is an ephemeral thing, here one minute, bright and then falling to the ground and forgotten, except for the inevitable litter. So why not make it a several day celebration? A birth of a nation should merit that.
So we go watch kids play in the inflatables, blow bubbles, get balloon animals, listen to some music and generally have a nice quiet evening.
And then the organizers laughed at the dry conditions left by the drought and threw 22 minutes of gunpowder and charged explosives into the air.
The Fourth is a good holiday for traditions. We have ours. What are yours? What traditions will be started this year? Maybe a few in this video, which establishes the setting for the event, shows some of the atmosphere and the fireworks finale.
We had great seats. Everyone had great seats. Really nice time.
