Deep Fried Kudzu

Snowy Sam's Town in Robinsonville (Tunica)

This is a picture of the snow outside our hotel the morning we left. Growing up, I just didn't get to see a whole lot of snow ever so it's a big deal! :)

Our room at the Sam's Town Hotel and Casino, Tunica

Room: The room itself here (furnishings-wise) is sub-Hampton, but okay. Although Av and I have been to Tunica several times (I really recommend the rooms at Harrah's) we for some reason got a mailer from Sam's Town Hotel and Casino offering $29 rooms for a week in December when we were going to need to be in that part of the Delta anyway for business. Since we only needed to stay one night in that particular area, we decided we would go just to see what that particular hotel & casino were like. The hotel has more than one floor, but several of the rooms (including ours) was on the first floor.

Lobby: Average.

Service: The front desk was nice. We self-parked because it was snowy/icy and I didn't want to give my Volvo to a valet, but the self-parking lot is super-close to the door anyway.

Food: We didn't eat here at all - we arrived well after supper-time and left before we were in the mood for breakfast.

Our experience is this: For $29 would I do it again? .....mmmm....maybe. Certainly not for more than that. The casino wasn't very nice, and we only spent about five minutes there. For a casino experience, there are much better choices (again, Harrah's) in Tunica (actually Robinsonville).

Oh, how I would love to attend the New York International Gift Fair in January & February!

While perusing some of the exhibitors in the 'crafts, contemporary' category, I found Vitreluxe, whom I think I have heard of before. These multi-colored vases in red/yellow/orange are fabulous!

One of my favorite stores is Williams Brothers is Philadelphia. Uh, Philadelphia, Mississippi of course! A very nice write-up of the store appears here in the Clarion-Ledger.

The store is part groceries, part feed & seed, and part shoe store. The last time we went to Philadelphia - this last Summer - we went to Williams Brothers on our way home. It was the month of the Neshoba County Fair - also known as Mississippi's Giant House Party (I **so** desperately want us to have one of the cabins there!!) and we picked up some things, including Av some Florsheims. We had gone to a very nice conference at one of the casinos there, but the casinos themselves - both the Golden Moon (the newer one) and the Silver Star - not so wild about those.

About four years ago Av and I went to Las Vegas as part of a convention I had to attend and we stayed at Mandalay Bay, which was very nice. At the time, it had the largest bathroom of any hotel we had stayed at (::especiallyinParis::). Oh, and their spa......one of our friends bought me a 'Mandalay Day' at their spa and it was soooooo nice......massage, facial, manicure, pedicure, etc etc etc. They also have a Robert Cromeans salon there and somehow I left looking like a 4th Dixie Chick (I think they thought this was appropriate since I am from Alabama).

We spent some time at some of the other casinos, and especially since we were there on a convention with some other friends, we had a great time taking in a lot of the very nice restaurants on the strip as well as in the 'real'/older part of Las Vegas. Very quickly: we did NOT have supper at Aureole, but this is the Charlie Parker restaurant with the 4-story wine tower. We did, however, we did get a kick out of seeing them retrieve bottles of wine via harnesses, from the large window inside the hotel. We did have supper at: Rum Jungle (wow!!), Shanghai Lilly (really wow!!), Trattoria Del Lupo (this is a quicky Wolfgang Puck place - not so good), and thankfully, Venetian Italian Restaurant on W Sahara Ave (not affiliated with The Venetian Hotel - this restaurant was in 'old' Las Vegas) which is no longer open but was a **great** experience.

We had a really big time, and we plan to go back this coming Summer as Barry Manilow's show (we are both Manilow fans/nerds) will be there. Av has already been looking up where we should stay. The show is at the Hilton, but we had a friend that stayed there on our last trip, and we were really unimpressed. I'm thinking......Bellagio, Mandalay, or The Venetian. Somewhere on the strip. If we were interested in staying elsewhere, we love 'American Casino' on Discovery Channel and may want to go have supper and spend some time at Green Valley Ranch Resort. I am really looking forward to our little trip!

The Boll Weevil Monument (intersection of College St. and Main St. right downtown) in Enterprise

The boll weevil monument (erected in 1919) is something almost everyone in Alabama has heard of. The boll weevil destroyed the cotton crop in and around the Wiregrass around the 1910-1915 period and made people realize there was more that they could farm than just cotton......so some of them decided to plant other crops (peanut farming is HUGE down here) and some others just left farming for good. To thank the boll weevil for making people realize there was more out there than just cotton, the people there erected this monument. At the bottom is a plaque that reads: "In profound appreciation to the Boll Weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity."

Even though this is the only monument of its kind (to a pest), the work of Dr. George Washington Carver was very important as he had done all sorts of research on other plants - namely the peanut - which was what so many of the farmers switched over to.

Lots more good information about the boll weevil monument can be found here.

Our Room at the Fairfield Inn, Dothan

Room: This was our first time at a Fairfield Inn (Av knows the people who own this hotel). The room was bright and cheerful in shades of a lime-green and crimson. The only odd thing was is that there was no artwork on the walls (there was a mirror, though).

Lobby: Standard-issue lobby for a mid-priced hotel.

Service: The front desk was friendly.

Food: I believe they had a continental breakfast available but we didn't try it.

Our experience is this: We would stay here again.

Angela Adams makes the most amazing rugs. They are sorta '70s meets '50s space-age, but in the most wonderful way. This little 2' x 3' rug is my favorite.

I have been looking for the perfect little tree to make a bottle tree from. I need one with several, several branches to hold the bottles, but I do kinda hate to cut the limbs on a healthy tree. The Mississippi Prison Industries Corporation actually *makes* a bottle tree form from steel and rebar. How neat is that? You have to go to Jackson to pick it up, but we are in Mississippi every month anyway.

I did some research on the web, and it seems that bottle trees have been documented as early as 1776 in Angola. Superstitiously, they are meant to ward off evil; other people understand them to as holding the spirits of ancestors as protectors of the home. I just like to think of them is as cheery yard ornaments. They can really be so beautiful.