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Playin in the ParkMar 25, 2011
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Playin in the Gulf of Mexico
the busy part of the beach
cleanup patrol heading home
| Friday, March 25, 2011 On Tuesday we packed up and moved 25 miles down the road to Gulf State Park at Gulf Shores, AL. The park is large and has a CG with almost 500 sites. Most of them are occupied by snow birds who arrived here from late October to January. It is a nice CG and all sites have full hookups tho hurricane Ivan gave it a good kick in 2004. Apparently a lot of large trees were broken off or toppled. There are really nice bike trails and we did some riding. But the best is we are about ½ mile from the beach as the crow flies and about 1 ½ miles by bike. So I have been playing in the surf a number of times. Barb doesn’t like salt water so won’t get in but I love it. Even tho there are a bunch of guys driving UTV’s up and down the beach looking for tarballs from the oil spill. But things look very clean. The weather has continued to be nothing but superb. I can walk in shorts, tee and sandals every morning. Yesterday we did some history and drove 20 miles west to a fort built after the War of 1812 to guard the mouth of Mobile Bay. It was made with a whole buncha red bricks, like millions. The only real battle here occurred during the Civil War and some ships were sunk near the fort. Afterward we unloaded our bikes from the truck and biked a trail near there. Today was cooler, hi only in mid 70’s. We ended up driving to the Pensacola Naval Air Station and going thru a great Naval Air Museum. We had been thru it in the early 90’s but I knew I could see it again. They had a bunch of WW II aircraft and a lot on the old carriers. I’ll bet ya didn’t know that Lake Michigan is giving up old aircraft from WW II, some of which are the only one of a kind left. They have even pulled out a couple that saw a lot of action at famous battles in the Pacific. So what are they doing down there? Well all the aircraft carrier landings that every new pilot had to make before being qualified to be a carrier pilot happened on Lake Michigan. The Navy took 2 old passenger steamers, cut the superstructure off and put a flat deck on them. Every week there were 3 or 4 accidents and a lot of planes ended up in the lake right off Chicago. As the war progressed many tired planes were brought back from the Pacific and used for training. No attempt to bring them back up occurred until the 70’s when historians realized what a treasure of old planes were laying on the bottom. And if you don’t know anything about the Lighter Than Air Squadron, it also is a very interesting history. We will pull out Sunday morning early to head north for Phenix, AL and the Habitat for Humanity build. We are looking forward to the experience. |
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