Here are a few pictures taken from our balcony on our condo.
We actually stayed across the street from the beach, but we had this nice walkway to cross that led to the beach. You had to be a guest or owner of the place that we stayed in to use it.
We got down there on Saturday afternoon, and just relaxed that night. Sunday we had “church” in the condo with “Pastor Jeff” then drove to Fort Morgan to walk around and have a picnic.
This is a really old fort that was used mostly in the Civil War. They actually closed it, then re-opened it for a short period during WWII in case of an attack on protect Mobile Bay.
Joe, pointing out where the water had been running down the walls inside the fort for hundreds of years. They still haven’t come up with a solution to stop it.
Me, practicing my photography skills…
There was lots of room for football there!
Inside some of the walls of the fort
If you look closely, you can see the oil barges lined up in the Gulf.
I wish we could have gotten a closer picture of this lighthouse out in the bay.
I think I was checking out the minnow’s in this little ditch of water.
We watched a few men fishing out in the Gulf. This guy had caught several “sheep head” fish.
We heard a siren going off for quite a while, then noticed one of the oil wells shooting fire off…very interesting!!
At the Beach…
You will notice my boys with half closed eyes in nearly every beach picture. It was quite bright down there!!
But they had fun playing in the sand. I think we brought half the beach home with us…
Joe bought a kite (because we went off and left ours at home) to fly. It took a while to get it up because it wasn’t very windy that particular day.
Taylor did his best to help him, and they finally did get it up for a long time. I forgot to take a picture of it though.
The water was so beautiful!!
Every night we sat around the table and played games. (and ate ice cream) Ahhh, what fun vacation is! Don’t let Jeff’s grim expression fool you. He ended up winning this seemingly never ending game of Mexican train. (and I was doing so good too…
)
Joe likes to play ignorant… “Huh? When did we make that rule up?”
Jorden, relaxing with his “DS”
I love to get up early and walk on the beach. Hard to get my crew up to join me though. They would rather sleep…Ha! Ha!
But I did get Jacob up to go with me one morning. The sun was so bright that you can’t even tell that is him.
We had fun looking for sea shells together.
I thought this made an interesting picture!
Jacob asked me to take a picture of the ripples the waves had made in the sand. It was cool looking!
One of the “monster” jelly fish we saw that morning. Would NOT have wanted to step on him!
Another one we saw…everyone watch your step please!
These two were WAAAYY out kayaking one day. (No one we knew). Before I could turn around good, they had drifted way down the beach. Several hours later they had paddled their way back up to where we were. I bet their arms were extremely sore the next day.
You could go parasailing too if you so desired. We didn’t!! I had a hard enough time sleeping on the 18th floor!
Messner Hiking Adventure
We decided to go hiking at the State Park on Friday, our last day there. Jacob got up coughing for the 2nd day, that morning and acting very “puny”. But as the major melancholy in our family, I contributed it to the “last day blues”. He normally does this whenever we are on vacation, so I didn’t think too much of it. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Someone in our family ALWAYS gets sick when we are on vacation. (This time it was Taylor and Jacob)Jeff got on the internet and looked up some trails we could possibly take. Joe and I looked at what he had found and we all decided to take one called “Rosemary Dunes”. I thought it had a nice ring to it. The information on-line said it was 1.75 miles long. So we drove down to the park and visited the nature center. Jacob went straight to the bathroom and threw up. I was a little concerned, but no too much at that point. We asked the dear “older” gentleman that worked there in the nature center for information on their trails, but since he was busy working a crossword puzzle, he pointed to a rack of pamphlets that he figured would help us out. NOT!
We got back in the van and drove around and around the RV park. Laughing at all the “underwear sightings”, (people’s laundry that was hanging out), and all the “seniors” that were riding their bikes and just sitting around doing nothing. After several minutes of driving time that didn’t seem to lead us to a hiking trail of any sort, we decided to stop and ask a group of seniors that were sitting together chatting. They were so excited that we needed their help!! They told us right where to go. (we had to leave the state park)
When we arrived at what we thought (think) was “Rosemary Dunes”, we saw this sign. Joe promptly said, “Well that was fun. Let’s get back in the van and go back to the condo. We’ve walked the whole thing already.”
There was no sign telling us how long or even what trail it was, but there were other people riding bikes and hiking, so we decided to try it. Most of us were all smiles and ready to go. It was a beautiful day and the perfect temp. And we had been promised that there were lots of “gators” on this trail. We were so excited! Taylor told us he had learned in Science class at school that if one started chasing us that we were to run in a “zig-zag” pattern. So we were all set.
Except for Jacob who at this point said his head was killing him and his stomach was killing him and he didn’t think he could make it.
But, he prevailed and tried it anyway.
Looking in vain for a “gator”.
Lots of “swampy” area’s for them to live in…
Keeping a close eye out for snakes and/or gators.
Jeff had the camera…
Rosemary….it grew all along the trail.
It was a nice “paved” trail. Not much hiking involved.
But a TON of walking!!
Taylor was having a blast throwing rocks into the bushes ahead of us to make us think something was going to come out and get us.
This is on the way back to the van. Check out Jacob’s expression. He has stopped numerous times to rest and tried to throw up as well. Hmmmm. I am beginning to think this was a mistake.
We got him to muster up a smile, but he forgot to look at the camera.
Jeff and Joe took turns carrying him on their backs/necks on the way back. He was so sick and weak. I feel like such a terrible mom!!
We never did see a “gator”, much to our disappointment. But if you look really closely, there is a baby snake in the water. He is on the right side, by the brown, dead, branch that is hanging over the middle of the water. I didn’t have time to put the zoom lens on to get a close-up picture. But we were all excited anyway, so much so that we scared him off.
I was wearing a pedometer and Jeff calculated that we had walked nearly 3 miles. (We never did get to the end of it). This is what Jacob looked and felt like when we got back to the van.
He continued to throw up and complain with his head the rest of that day and night. He is still coughing (two days later) but his stomach seems to be fine. Must have been a 24 hour virus.…
Messner Family Photo Shoot
I love “Family Beach Pictures”! So I packed our “khaki's and white’s” in hopes that we would at least get one good shot….NOPE! It just isn’t possible for us I guess. But here are a few that I liked.
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This is exactly what I wanted, except for one thing. Can you tell what it is???
There were TONS that I deleted due to eyes being closed…ARgggg!! Maybe I’m too much of a perfectionist!!???
Sunset-view from our balcony
The moon Friday and Saturday night was supposed to be the biggest it had been in I don’t know how many years. It was beautiful, but if people hadn’t kept telling me that it was supposed to be bigger than normal, I wouldn’t have noticed that it was any different than the other millions of times that I had seen a full moon.
Joe rented a car for his trip from the Mobile airport to Gulf Shores. This is what they gave him. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! I am sorry but this is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Every time I see them on the road I point and laugh, then my brother-in-law shows up in one. Jeff took me on a date one night while we were there and Joe took the boys out for some “uncle-time”. We had to take this thing because only two people can ride in it. I wanted to sink down in the seat so no one would see me. People were pointing and laughing as we drove by. And to top it all off, we had to run our feet on the ground under our seat to get it started!!! Yabba Dabba Doo!!!
What a great vacation we had!!
2 comments:
What a great post! Loved the pics and hearing about your vacation. Glad you had a good time.
PS Should I call you Wilma?
Lol about the car story. You have some great family pix! YOu could make a collage photo card out of them.
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