Gulf Beachcombing

One of the reasons I choose a seaside place for our winter get-away is that I like to spend time beachcombing. I wasn’t able to do quite as much as I desired because the weather became inhospitable with a brisk cold wind the last 3 or 4 days of our stay. I knew from some internet discussions that Gulf Shores is not considered a very good place for finding shells. Perdido Key was often mentioned as a better alternative. I did have better success at Amelia Island last year. 

I found a lot of small sand dollars at Perdido Key and a razor clam shell. Most of my finds I pick up because they have texture, color, or shapes that interest me. Very few are intact. I picked up quite a few oysters and kitten paws this year. The small whelk pieces appear to be pear whelk. At Amelia Island last year I only found two tellin with the radiating rays of color. One of the most plenteous shells at the beach a few blocks from our cottage were tellin! Sometimes I am not sure the difference between coquina and tellin. The coquina have circles of color I guess while the tellin have rays of color? They are very similar in shape and size. The pictorial index I used last year seems to call something different a tellin and the photo of coquina includes both circle and rayed color. Other internet sources make a distinction.

The golden and cream shell piece comes from a pear whelk. I found 2 pieces of Scotch Bonnet but one was quite discolored. A small bit of sea urchin is new to my collection.

I don’t really know what I will do with these large oyster shells. I brought home a small piece of driftwood as well. When I set up my display again, I will decide whether these will work; if not, I will discard them. Always easier to discard than to wish one had picked up an item left behind on the beach.

 My husband is talking of going to Arizona next winter instead of a beach. I’ll have to find a different way to pass time.

Odds and Ends

I see the hyperlink I thought I had put beneath the photo of reindeer moss ended way at the bottom of my post. Reindeer moss supposedly can be eaten. It is highly recommended that one leach it or cook it first as it is high in acid and can give one a stomach ache if eaten without any processing. Caribou eat a variety of this lichen obviously without cooking it so one wonders just how accurate the information is. I would have to be pretty desperate to try ingesting any of it.

On a happier note, I do have something tasty to suggest. I often try crockpot recipes while on our winter get-away. This year we tried Crockpot Chicken Fajitas. We liked this so well I will probably make it here at home soon.

Crockpot Chicken Fajitas

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 yellow onion, sliced

3 sweet peppers, sliced

2 boneless chicken breasts

1/4 cup chicken broth

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cumin (I had none to add; I used some red pepper flakes in the rental cottage cupboard)

1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder

1-2 tablespoons lime juice (I squeezed a fresh lime)

tortillas—flour ones for fajitas

cheese, sour cream, salsa, guacamole (I had no guacamole to use)

Instructions:

1. Combine sliced onion and peppers in the bottom of a greased crockpot

2.Lay chicken on top of the veggies

3. Pour chicken broth over the chicken

4. Sprinkle everything with cumin, salt, and chili powder

5. Squirt the top with a bit of lime juice

6. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours (or on high for 4-6 hours)  I found chicken and veggies done at 6 hours on high

7. When meat is done, shred with two forks and stir back into the juices

8. Serve with your favorite fajita mixings

Adapt for your own spice level.

 

I received my 1095-A form for filing health care subsidy information on the IRS form a few days before leaving for Alabama. I received an email just before we headed home telling me it was incorrect and that I should wait to file my income tax documents. I have been reading the comments below the announcement made on Healthcare.gov blog. A good many people have not received the 1095-A form at all. People contacted the marketplace about address changes, yet the form was sent to the old address. I had informed them back in November via phone that I would not be purchasing insurance from the marketplace in 2015 as I would be on Medicare. The lady read me a scripted narration to which I had to agree that I understood I would no longer have marketplace insurance as of January.

They automatically re-enrolled everybody who did not apply for a different coverage. I received a bill from my insurer in January and called them. They would not disenroll me. Had to be informed by the marketplace. I simply didn’t pay and so finally in early February was told I no longer had insurance. Of course I had Medicare insurance. It did diddlysquat to call the marketplace and wait on hold 20 minutes in November to inform them of my change. There are all kinds of horror stories about people who called to report changes and those changes were not digitally input. For some, that means repaying part of the subsidy. One lady kept being told she had no 1095-A under her account; turns out they created a 1095 form under her husband’s name who has Medicare and thus no account, but after a month of 30 phone calls she still hasn’t received the form she needs.

So I have joined the elite club of problematic 1095-A forms. I usually try to file my tax forms by mid-March. I have been given no estimate as to when I will receive a corrected form. At least, I won’t have to file an amended tax report since I didn’t file before the snafu was found. The weird thing is that the amount shown for my premium and the amount shown for the subsidy are correct; the wrong column is the Silver Plan used to calculate subsidy amount. They input the 2015 instead of the 2014 Silver Plan cost. But that wrong amount wasn’t used when they calculated the subsidy and probably only affects people who opted to get the subsidy in an annual amount when they filed with the IRS in 2015 rather than someone like me who received a monthly subsidy in advance. Still, I have to wait because the final form won’t match what the IRS finally has in their records. I did a quick glance at the 8902 IRS form and you better believe the government made it complicated. I see I do need to finish my regular 1040 first so I guess I will do that much while I wait for the corrected 1095-A. Makes me really glad that I had Medicare in January and thus don’t have to face 1095-A issues for having marketplace insurance in 2015.

Gulf Shores Alabama

For our winter get-away this year we drove to Gulf Shores, Alabama. Our rented cottage was out a ways on the Fort Morgan Peninsula.

Driftwood Cottage

The cottage was within easy walking distance to the beach. Its finest asset was the screened-in porch. We ate several meals out there listening to the sound of the waves. I also dried my collected shells and read my book in the porch sunshine. Alas, this strange winter’s icy fingertip even reached us there in southern Alabama. One night we had a low of 25 degrees; a cold wind limited outdoor and porch time towards the end of our stay. However, we did have several warm pretty days.

 There was a nice boardwalk thru some trees to the beach path.

 

Pastel colors dominated on the beach homes.

Our view of the beach was very limited as we were several blocks back from the water. The crow’s nest deck accessible by a ladder-like stairway gave a better view and would be nice in warmer months. I only climbed up there twice to try to photograph the sunset.

One of our days was bookended with a colorful sunrise and a pretty sunset.

Sunrise

Sunset

 We were fortunate that Monday February 16th’s evening rain stopped by morning, but Mardi Gras was extremely cold. We braved the chill bundled in our winter coats and gloves to see the Gulf Shores Mardi Gras parade. Many of the small communities in the counties near Mobile have their own parades. Mobile considers itself the heart/home of Mardi Gras. It has parades for over 2 weeks. The local television stations air the parades on February 17th throughout the entire day. The floats in Gulf Shores were not very elaborate; sometimes a boat being towed with some streamers or an old car had people tossing the goodies. We caught some beads and moon pies, but then decided to leave early to get some beignets and café au lait at a nearby café to warm up.

The restaurants and some homes have Mardi Gras decorations: pine trees or wreaths in purple, gold, and green, the official colors.

These wreaths were for sale in the beignet café.

My sister came from Charlotte to spend a few days with us. She had never been to Florida and wanted to tour the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, about an hour away. We took one of the guided tours and paid to see an IMAX movie mostly about the Blue Angels.

One disappointment was that the ferry between Fort Morgan and Dauphin Island was under repair and not running while we were in Alabama. We took the longer drive around to Bellingrath Gardens south of Mobile. Mostly camellias and kale and daffodils blooming. The azaleas were a few weeks out, still in buds. We toured the home as well. Mr. Bellingrath, who made part of his fortune as the distributor for Coca Cola in southern Alabama and Mobile, was quite advanced in the facilities he put in his 1935 home: pink toilets and sinks in the baths, large industrial sized stainless steel refrigerators, two large industrial dish washers. The house was full of china and porcelain knick knacks supposedly purchased by his wife from local citizens during the Depression to provide living funds for those hurting. She also purchased French and other European porcelain objet de arts from dealers. We had watched Downton Abbey where Moseley was given the job of polishing the silver. The Bellingraths had just as much silver and china as the Granthams.

 

 

The conservatory had lovely flowers.

Our first full day in Gulf Shores, my husband and I walked the Pine Trail of the Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge. It was a warm lovely day; the first part of the trail goes through oak and pine forest to a lookout. The second part takes you out through the dunes to the Gulf of Mexico. Climbing up the dunes and back down was harder.

Rather strange vegetation called reindeer lichen

We made another jaunt towards Mobile to tour the USS Alabama. It also included an airplane pavilion.

This battleship shares a name in common with several earlier ships whose history is told in the displays. She has the big guns needed as she fought in the Pacific in World War II.

The aircraft in the separate building had historic importance to Alabama, such as a Tuskegee Airmen plane.

There are also some aircraft in the grassy park.

Calamity Jane

 One warm day we headed east again toward Florida. We walked the beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, specifically Johnson Beach on Perdido Key. I found some of my best shells on this beach, a razor clam shell and several small sand dollars.

Our last outing was to the town of Fairhope on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. It has a very good art center and shops and restaurants. We especially liked R Bistro for lunch. Fairhope’s old town is quaint and the town makes an effort to plant flowers along the streets. Lots of free parking.

The daffodils and tulips almost made me forget about the blizzard we had missed and accumulating snow back home. There is a long pier that juts into the bay, but it was too windy the day we visited. Our drive to Fairhope took us through some countryside where we saw many pecan groves.

We had thought about visiting Fort Morgan at the end of the peninsula and not far from our cottage, but the cold wind stopped us. We had earlier seen some of the ruins from the road. That and the ferry were two attractions we missed. We ate shrimp several times, once with grits. I had tasty fish tacos at the Sassy Bass down the highway from our cottage.

I must finish with the pink chair. Since we were on a peninsula, any time we drove to and from the cottage from our outings or grocery shopping or to the library in Gulf Shores, we passed a chair on the side of the road not far from the turnoff for our cottage. It became my emblem for our stay in Alabama. I never saw anybody sitting in it, but if they had, they had a great view of Bon Secour Bay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

reindeer lichen

Groundhog Day

Lots of sunshine today so if Mr. Groundhog can tunnel up through the snow he will see his shadow. At 14 degrees outside, I decided I would stick to taking photos through the windows. Most of them are distorted by the screens, but you can get an idea of how much snow we got since late Saturday night. It fell steadily all day Sunday. Before Saturday night, we had small patches of snow with lots of grass showing.

Our church services were canceled. What I had in the freezer didn’t look too interesting, so we decided  to use my husband’s pickup truck in 4-wheel-drive mode around 11:30 a.m. to go to nearby Ruby Tuesday’s. U.S. Highway 30 is a main road, but even there the plows were having a hard time keeping up with the snowfall. Only 2-3 groups when we entered the restaurant, but a few more came in as we dined. On the way home, we noticed a police car with lights pulled to the side of the westbound lane. A pickup truck had gone off the side of the road into a ditch. About half a block further, in the eastbound lane, a woman in a small car had skidded into the median with all of the piled up plowed snow and was stuck. No way I would have driven a small car on that road. Ours was stuck in the garage anyway because there had been one pass of our road, but no plowing of the driveways and the plowed snow blocked the end of our drive.

 

 

We watched the first half of the Super Bowl and the half-time show, but then went to Downton Abbey. When Downton finished, we went back to see if the football game was over. There was less than 2 minutes to play. What a crazy ending. The fumbled ball caught by a Seahawk already on his back, a brawl. Can’t say I was sorry to have missed most of the second half.

We may get a bit more snow Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. I don’t know the official amount from yesterday; I would guess 8 inches, but the problem is that the winds picked up Sunday evening causing drifting. I like living in a place with 4 distinct seasons for the most part; a big snow storm is the part I don’t like. Fortunately, the forecast Friday looks good for travel. We are headed for Gulf Shores, Alabama and warmer weather.