Alabama to Kentucky

We had a really nice stay with our friends E. and L. in Anniston, Alabama, from Sunday evening until Wednesday morning. We drove up to Cheaha, the highest point in Alabama, where the trees were showing off their yellow, orange, and red foliage. We also went to a nearby winery and tasted some muscadine, villard blanc, and chardonnel wines. Not to mention a peach wine and a blueberry wine. They were interesting, and a couple were good. Yes, chardonnel, not chardonnay. It's a hybrid.

Near Cheaha (TCHEE-uh-HA), the highest point in Alabama at about 2300 feet

This morning, before our departure on our trip to Kentucky, I told E. and L. that I wanted to have donuts for breakfast. They don't usually eat donuts but they were good sports. L. and I drove over to LaMar's Donut Shop in Anniston and bought a dozen glazed donut holes, one plain old-fashioned donut, one glazed old-fashioned, two regular glazed, and two maple-glazed. We all ate some, and E. then packed up the leftovers for us to take on our trip to Kentucky.

Needless to say, we don't eat many donuts in France.

We left Alabama in sunshine and cut through a little corner of northwest Georgia. It clouded over. A few minutes later we were in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it started raining. It rained hard all afternoon as we drove up through the eastern Tennessee mountains and the towns of Spencer, Sparta, Cookeville, Livingston, and Byrdstown.

We arrived at Albany, Kentucky, at about 3:00 p.m. It was pouring rain. We just drove through, which was a disappointment. We wanted to see it better. The population of Albany KY is 2200, which makes it smaller than Saint-Aignan. We couldn't take any pictures. It was raining too hard.

Tonight we are staying near Albany at the Dale Hollow State Park Resort hotel. It's a modern place on a big artificial lake, and it has wireless Internet access. A minute ago, Walt opened the dorr and went out onto the patio of our ground-floor room. "Uh-oh, a skunk," he said. I had to take a picture.

This skunk came close but did not spray us.