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Montgomery: We only spent one night in Montgomery, so there really is not much to write about. Other than the RV Park we stayed at, had some pretty sad looking RVs in it. It is hard to see people living in such horrible conditions. I realize we live in an RV also, but it is a pretty nice RV and we choose to live in it, it is not our only choice.
Birmingham: It was just a short trip up to Oak Mountain State Park where we stayed for two days. Sometimes it is weird to stay in a state park, everyone there is camping and we are just living. The first day we spent in the coach until dinner. We ate out at what we thought would be a brewpub, but its brewing capabilities have been shut down. The laws are so screwy in Alabama we found out. In order to brew beer before, they had to make a seperate building next door and truck the beer around the block before bringing it into the restaurant. Something about a law you cannot brew beer and serve it in the same building. Also in Alabama, port is not considered wine, it is a liquer. So at the wine bar we could not get port. Whatever. We have not really settled on where we want to live, but we know we cannot live in Alabama. We need our brewpubs.
Now back to the restaurant we went to for dinner. The food was top notch, We ate so much we were gonna burst. They may not brew their own beer, but they had great beer on tap. They had our new favorite, Southern Pecan. We had it in Pensacola and loved it and it was just as impressive. I had a Sweetwater Brown ale, but it did not stack up so I switched (I just have a weakness to try new beers:) There was a lot going on down at the five points area, many of the choices were a little too upscale for us though. We had fun, although it would have been a lot more fun if Alice were with us.
Even in Alabama we can find a winery to visit. We visited the Vizzini Winery in Calera. We were a little taken back, because their “vineyard” was tiny, almost to the point where they should not advertise being a vineyard. Now after dogging out their vineyard, I have to give praise to their tasting room. It was very nice, we had a great lunch in the restaurant and sampled some pretty good wines. They import grapes from Washington State to create them. We purchased a Viognier. I actually cannot wait to try it paired with something spicy. In addition to nice wines so was the host, he was a good old guy. Quite funny too. We probably should have bought a bottle of wine for Alice, but she still has not drank the last one we got her.
Speaking of wine, we opened our bottle of Pietra Santa Zinfandel. It was better than we remembered. Sharon made a great sun dried tomato pesto pasta to go with it, it just brought out the spiciness of the wine. Sooo good!