Fluffy Goes to L.A.

Hi Kids,

My last trip was to L.A. Did you think I meant Los Angeles? Wrong! In this part of the world, it means Lower Alabama. Look at a map. Do you see that little chunk of the state that crowds in between Florida and Mississippi on the Gulf coast? That's where I was.

This is a picture of me on the bed in our bedroom at the Grand Hotel and Resort on Mobile Bay. We could look out our window and see the boats in the marina. As you can tell from the picture at the top, the grounds were beautiful.

Mobile Bay spills into the Gulf of Mexico. We saw lots of pelicans -- I think they look like pterodactyls! Miss Elaine knows a poem that starts "A wonderful bird is the pelican. It's beak can hold more than its belly can!"

We visited several little towns in the area. I found a friend in Fairhope.

In Foley we went to a railroad museum where they had a really neat room with model trains. Besides trains, there were a lot of cool things there. At the little tiny fire station, you could see through the windows at firemen sliding down the pole. Then the garage door went up and the little fire truck came out and drove down the street to a building on fire. There was also a little drive-in restaurant where a tiny car pulled up to the window to order! If you look carefully in the middle of the picture, you can see a man -- that will help you see how big this train set-up was!
We rode through the Foley rose gardens in another train -- a little bigger than the ones in the model. Dave Ramey drove the train and posed with me for this picture.

In the town of Magnolia Springs, we went down by the Magnolia River. People who live on the river have their mail delivered by boat.

Later we went with a naturalist to see these interesting plants. They are carnivorous. Do you know what that means? In this picture you can see that the plants have several parts. The flowers are those pretty dark red and green things. The green and white cone-shaped things are actually leaves. They are specially designed to trap insects.

There was a stuffed alligator in the Nature Center. Miss Elaine thought it would be funny if it looked like the alligator was eating me. I didn't think it was very funny and I refused to speak to her for several minutes.

To be continued......

Love,

Fluffy

Bear-y Scary Times

Hi Kids,

I can't believe it's been a month since I've blogged. Time flies and soon school will be out! I've been on another trip but I haven't finished telling you about my last one yet! So here's a little more about my San Antonio trip.

At the top of this post is Miss Eva from the San Antonio Convention and Visitors' Bureau with me. She sent each of you a pencil -- which Miss Elaine needs to bring you!

This is me with Chef Donald Hoffman. We had breakfast with him at the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel. He gave us some of his special seasoned salt -- yum.

This is Miss Elaine and Chef Rudy at the Culinary Institute of America. We were learning how to make some dishes that people might have eaten in Texas many years ago. And they still like it now. Miss Elaine is making a salsa verde -- that's Spanish for green sauce -- using a stone molcajete to crush the tomatillos. Next time she'll use a blender!

And this is me in my chef's toque. They let me wear it but they wouldn't let me cook!

One of the best things we did was go to Sea World. And do you know who else was there? Jungle Jack Hanna was there and he brought lots of animals with him. He REALLY liked me!

This was the scary part. We went to his dressing room after his show and he had two cheetahs running loose. Their names are Bella and Jacob and they are five months old. They looked like big kitties. I got in Miss Elaine's bag. I didn't want them to think I was a play toy!

Then we went to the Shamu show. That wasn't scary -- just a little wet when the whale hit the water!

Love,

Fluffy