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!

From the Mountains to the Beach (Mile 6,710, Trail Mile 171.1)

There's a quip people would make in Los Angeles that you could ski and surf in the same day. And that was true, theoretically. Big Bear was only a couple of hours drive from, say Huntington Beach, and if you were a particularly adventurous type of person, you could probably make it happen. Though I've never tested the theory, I've always though that it would lose some luster because, ultimately, you're experiencing two different parts of the same landscape. And, if you're from LA, then you probably know both of them pretty well.

We, on the other hand, were wrapping up two weeks in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee and heading nine hours southwest to the Gulf of Mexico and Dauphin Island, Alabama. Now THAT feels like two different worlds.

Our second week in Gatlinburg was as pleasant as the first, though I think Rachel and Nathan were getting a little bit of cabin fever at this point. We were perched on a hillside with no real yard to speak of, and even getting down to town was a hair-raising experience with the windy mountain roads. 

Nevertheless, we got our money's worth out of the hot tub on the porch, and Nathan and I played hide-and-go-seek pretty much ever day (it had replaced frisbee as the official sport of our trip).

And, halfway through the week, we had the most beautiful snowfall. It dusted the mountaintops like powdered sugar.

  Rachel also gave Nathan a haircut (FINALLY) after months of him getting shaggier and shaggier.

Nathan played Minecraft in his down time.

And worked his way through a couple of good books.

Rachel caught up on her knitting.

I had a small but pleasant workspace in a corner of the bedroom ... which had a great view!

And on our second weekend we had more amazing adventures in the park.

The week's snow had left the higher elevations frosty and beautiful. 

In particular, the ice was amazing to the point of being otherworldly. Nathan, who had developed an intense fascination with ice over the past couple of months stopped to examine every icicle and frozen puddle. Another interesting thing that we'd noticed, even back in Shenandoah, was the amazing clarity of the mountain ice. You could literally see through it like glass!

The Smokies must have been the most amazing collection of picture perfect streams and waterfalls I've ever seen. They're everywhere! In fact, they're so ubiquitous that some trails end in amazing waterfalls that they don't even bother to list as attractions. 

Though the trails weren't always easy ... especially for us tall folks!

I think that some of my best memories of our trip will come from the unexpectedly incredible trails of the Great Smoky Mountains.

But, eventually it came time to say goodbye to our mountain cabin. We bid a fond farewell to our mascot, Clarence ...

... and packed up to head south.

There was a heavy snow Monday night that had us tromping through 6 inches of powder as we loaded up the car on Tuesday morning. But, after a long, nine-hour drive, we went from this ...

... to this:

Here's the map: