DAUPHIN ISLAND, AL - #1

Thursday May 5th was a long, but good travel day - 432 miles. We left High Island, TX early and hit I-10 east. Of course, the longest part of the drive was across Louisiana, and even though the roads are better that they used to be, there are still a few rough spots. There is especially one bad section east of Lafayette for about 15 miles that make you think it's going to shake the motorhome apart - a slow 40mph is about all it can take. We crossed the 18 mile bridge over the Atchafalaya Swamp and then the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. Seems like a long time ago that we crossed the Mississippi going west.

Once through Louisiana, we crossed the gulf coast part of Mississippi and then about 30 miles into Alabama to Dauphin Island. Sure was thankful to cross the Dauphin Island bridge and get here safe & sound. We checked into the Dauphin Island Campground after an almost 9 hour day!

Friday and Saturday were just days to relax - beautiful weather, sunny and in the 70's. This campground and our campsite is backed up to the Audubon Bird Sanctuary, but all of the migrating birds seem to have moved on. We walked into the sanctuary and also went to a couple of the other birding spots on the island, but there's not much activity. We put up our bird feeder pole and LaVerne put out seeds, but the only birds we're getting are the locals.

Sunday (yesterday) we went to the Dauphin Island Baptist Church for a great Mother's Day worship service. The pastor remembered us from last year. Afterwards got a burger at Billy Goat Concessions across the street from our campground by the ferry terminal. The rest of the day we relaxed and sat outside watching all the weekend activity -- the campground was really crowded both Saturday and Sunday and was good for people watching. By dark most of them had departed and it quietened down somewhat.




Today (Monday) was an exploration day. LaVerne had never been to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, both of which are summer tourist beach get-aways - some of our kids & grandkids vacation here sometimes. Of course they are across Mobile Bay from Dauphin Island, so rather than drive back north to Mobile and then back down the other side of the bay, we opted to take the ferry. It is a toll ferry that runs about every hour and a half and goes back & forth across the bay from Dauphin Island to Ft. Morgan - the terminal is right across the street from the campground.

There are two old forts (on opposite sides of Mobile Bay) that used to guard the bay. Ft. Morgan on the eastern side is the oldest and was instrumental during the War of 1812, then again during the Battle of Mobile Bay in the Civil War. On the western point at Dauphin Island is Ft. Gaines just down the street from our campground. It was built in 1821 and was also instrumental during the Battle of Mobile Bay. It was interesting on the ferry trip to see Ft. Gaines as we were leaving Dauphin Island and then to see Ft. Morgan on the other side. Here's pictures of the two forts, plus us aboard the ferry, and also one of the off-shore oil rigs that we passed close by.

Once across the bay we went to Cracker Barrel in Foley, AL for breakfast, then rode up and down the beach at Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. We stopped and walked out on the pier at Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores. Both Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are like lots of other beach resort towns - lot's of condos. On the outskirts are a lot of beach houses - on stilts, no trees!

Since we needed to stop at WalMart for a few commodities, we took the scenic (long) way back rather than the ferry return trip. Even with the short-cut ferry trip over, we still put over 100 miles on the Jeep today! Lot of riding and lots of scenery!




We're still here for the rest of the week, so I'll probably do another 'blog' post later. Even though we missed the bird migration, we're still enjoying it here.