Feet in the Sand

For all of the traveling we've done so far, it only occurred to me when we arrived on Dauphin Island how little of it we've spent on the coast. Certainly we got a big dose of the Pacific in McKinleyville, and we were close to the Atlantic in Connecticut. Throw in the Great Lakes, and it isn't like we haven't seen water, but in each of those places, the coast was an occasional backdrop - not a feature. 

Not so on the Gulf Coast! This stop is all about the ocean. We are on an island, after all. Nearly all of the moments Nathan has spent not doing school work, he's spent playing outside on the beach. And, oddly, much of that time involved PJs.

We splashed in the waves, had long jump contests in the sand (much to my bad hip's chagrin), played hide-and-go-seek with Mardi Gras beads, and dug big holes in the sand.

Our house is a quintessential beach cottage.

Several evenings were marked by amazing sunsets!

We also got some wacky Gulf Coast weather. It probably rained for about half of the time we've been here. In fact, we were surprised to read that Dauphin Island gets more rain annually than Seattle! This really hit home on Saturday, when we took a drive out to Mississippi to visit Gulf Island National Seashore, the only National Park unit within striking distance of Dauphin Island. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in the middle of a gross, rainy day, and, even worse, the few hiking trails were closed due to storm damage from Hurricane Zeta in November 2020. Still, we soldiered on and took a brief walk out to the fishing pier, just to say we did it.

More importantly though, we managed to score a king cake from a local bakery! King cake is a largely Gulf Coast treat, enjoyed primarily at Mardi Gras. They're very seasonal and often made to order, so we were lucky to find one (one of the last two!) at the cake shop.

Sunday's weather couldn't have been more different ... or more perfect! Sunny, cool, and pleasant. We took a trip down-island to the Audubon bird sanctuary for a nice little walk.

Sadly, we didn't see some of the island's more colorful residents.

We paid a visit to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, a venerable research facility on the island with a small aquarium. Interestingly, the DISL is the place where a whole lot of my co-workers did their graduate research work.

In fact, one interesting thing about Dauphin Island is that NOAA is everywhere!

This wasn't too much a surprise. Dauphin Island featured prominently in Deepwater Horizon, and there a couple of DWH restoration project taking place here on the island. In fact, we're just a couple of blocks away from roughly 800 acres of undeveloped land that NOAA and its Alabama partners are working to buy and protect as wildlife habitat.

We made one last stop at Fort Gaines, which featured prominently in the Battle of Mobile Bay, where Admiral Farragut uttered his famous line "Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!"

We told Nathan no pooping in the park, but sadly he just couldn't hold it.

Our time in Alabama is coming to an end soon. We're off to Galveston on Tuesday. Fortunately, we have more beach to look forward to in Texas, and we're all thrilled about that!