First Five Days of May … From Rainy & Windy to Sunny & Windy

Sunday, 5 May
Gulf State Park  — Gulf Shores, Alabama
Temps: Lo 51F / Hi 70F (10.5C / 21C)

The title of this post says it all.  So that’s it for this blog entry!

OK ... I’m kidding.  Here are the words and the images to wrap up our stay at Gulf State Park.  Brace yourselves … this is a long one.

If there’s been one constant since leaving April behind, it’s the wind.  I’m not talking gentle, cooling breezes.  Rather, winds that rock the Phaeton and keep the toppers flapping all day long.  No weather alerts or warnings, just a lot of constant wind.  We survived; and so did the screen shelter, which was flailed about by gusts reaching 25-40 mph (40-65 kph).

Wednesday, May 1 …

The overcast skies threatened rain all day long, so we didn’t venture far.  A 2½-mile (4 km) walk around the campground loops served as exercise, and gave us an opportunity to pick out preferred sites should we find our way back here.  Except for the occasional sprinkle, the wet stuff held off until after nightfall.  Then, we really got dumped on.  All night long.  And into mid-morning on Thursday.  By 10:30p, the wind gusts were so bad that we pulled in the rear driver’s side slide just so we could get some sleep.

This was a no-shutter-click day.

Thursday, May 2 …

Another overcast day, with rain falling until mid-morning.  The wind abated a bit, but only in comparison to the night before.  We still had gusts in the 25 mph (40 kph) range.

The yucky weather was good for one thing — errands.  So we made a run to Pensacola, Florida — about 30 miles (48 km) away.

Grooming appointments; grocery shopping at the NAS Pensacola commissary; finding a locksmith to get a spare remote key made; a “naked” fish & chips lunch with a side of senate bean soup at our favorite Irish Pub — McGuire’s; and fresh fish and gelato from Joe Patti’s.  A productive afternoon.  Clicked the shutter only when Mui spied a mural and pointed it out to me.

Located on Government Street, this mural is on the side of an environmental services company.

The sun made a valiant, but unsuccessful attempt to break through the clouds in the afternoon.  At least the rain gave us a break; except for one big dump late in the evening, no wet stuff fell through the afternoon, and the puddles in the grass clearing had a chance to dry out a bit.

Friday, May 3 …

Some sprinkles; otherwise a dry and gloomy day.  But winds from the NNW blew strong.  Despite the not-so-grand weather, we took the trikes out for a 10-mile (16 km) ride on the Hugh S. Branyon Backcountry Trail.  Entertainment of the day: watching an eastern cottontail rabbit build a nest next to the electric pedestal at our site.  Running under the motorhome to the clearing on the other side, the bunny made countless trips with bunches of grass and sticks clutched between its teeth.  By nightfall, there was no evidence of the nest.  Don’t know if there is a litter under the cover she placed on the nest; won’t be messing around with it to find out.  No photo ops; just memories tucked into our minds.

Saturday, May 4

Woke up to a temp of 49F (9F); our coldest in a while.  But the forecast called for a dry day with plenty of sunshine.

Time to go out and play.  We bundled up and headed out to Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, the first of the two-stops we had planned for the day.

Bon Secour NWR is 14 miles (22.4 km) from Gulf State Park;
our second stop, Fort Morgan, another 12.7 miles (20 km) from there.

The refuge, which was established in 1980, “encompasses some of Alabama’s last remaining undisturbed coastal barrier habitat.”  From the four trails open to visitors, we chose the Pine Beach Trail.  Four miles (6.4 km) round trip, we added another 2 miles (3.2 km) by doing the Gator Lake Trail.

The observation tower overlooks Gator Lake, with Little Lagoon on the other side of
the path (no photos as I would have been shooting into the sun).

Gator Lake from the trail by the same name.

Top: Spiderwort; Bottom Left: Sandhill Milkweed; Bottom Right: Indian Blanket.

Despite the early hour, the wildlife was visibly lacking.  No gators.  No bobcats.  No opossums or raccoons.  Nor did we see any songbirds — except for mockingbirds — although we heard them singing deep in the brush.  Great blue herons and egrets were off in the distance.  There were quite a few ospreys, but they were mostly flying high; and the one we saw sitting on the nest flew off as soon as we stopped.  We moved on quickly so that she could return to the nest, in case there were eggs needing her attention.

Mockingbird

Osprey

For Mui, the highlight of our visit were the stingrays.
Swimming at the edge of Little lagoon, this one nearly beached itself trying to get a look at us.

The Pine Beach Trail is considered moderate to strenuous.  We didn’t find it to be so, although walking through soft sand near the end of the trail wasn’t easy.  Once we reached the dunes, either side of the trail was roped off as nesting areas. Nesting for which birds?  Don’t know, but we saw lots of swallow-like birds flitting about here.

Healthy looking dunes on the way to the beach overlooking Bon Secour Bay.

We arrived at the beach to the wind gusting and the sand blowing.  Undeterred, we sat for a while, enjoying our snacks, and watching the pelicans fishing offshore and a lone sanderling running about on the beach.

Sanderling braving a sand storm to feed in the surf.

Our next stop of the day took us to Fort Morgan.  Located at Mobile Point on the tip of the barrier island, the fort is appropriately nicknamed the “Guardian of the Bay.”  Once part of the Third System Coastal Defense System, it was built in 1834.  Fort Morgan played a role in the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864 — although not a very successful one since Admiral Farragut (of “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” fame) managed to get his ships past the fort and into the bay with the loss of just a single ship.  Following the Civil War, the fort went through a series of deactivations and reactivations, and was finally deactivated and turned over to the State of Alabama in 1946.

Burrowing through the glacis, the upward sloping ground (top right),
the postern (left) connects to the dry moat (bottom right).  The brick-lined
Drain that runs through the ditch carries rainwater out of the dry moat.

Fort Morgan is on the grounds of a state historic park by the same name.  The $7 pp entrance fee would have been enough to deter us from going into the park.  But when we queried about a military discount, Mui gained free admittance, and we only had to pay $3 for my entrance fee.

Mui finds a spot to rest where the Mobile Bay Lighthouse once stood in
the center of the Lighthouse Battery.

Parking the car, we headed to the small museum first.  Lots of information, but we’re not big on written exhibits, so we quickly browsed through the displays and left to do a self-guided tour of the fort.

The casemates, as these arched rooms are known, were designed as protected gun
positions, but few cannons were ever mounted.  Instead, the casemates were used for
the storage of food and equipment, and occasionally as living quarters for troops.

The wind was blowing strong everywhere we walked in and around the fort.  Foregoing any thoughts of enjoying our late snack/lunch on the beach, we looked for an alternative spot.  Eventually, after climbing some seriously steep stairs with risers obviously not designed for shorties like me, we found a secluded corner in one of the gun emplacements.

Left: this bricked-up casemate was just too funny to pass without taking a photo.
Do you see what we saw?

Right: see what I mean By seriously steep stairs?

In closing this day …  one of the surprises for me was the view from the ramparts of all the offshore oil platforms in Mobile Bay.  It wasn’t their presence that surprised me; I expected to see them.  I just didn’t expect to see them as close to the shoreline as some of them were.

I have to admit that there might be a bit of a subliminal message
in the way I took the photo on the right.

An afternoon at home wrapped up the day.

Back to Today …

Tomorrow we leave Gulf State Park.  In fact, we leave Alabama and move onto Florida, our “personal mailbox state” — aka .. our home state.  We prefer not to stray far from the campground on departure prep days.  Luckily, there’s plenty of fun to be had on the Hugh S. Branyon Backcountry Trail.  Mui wanted to go for a trike ride, but with the wind still blowing strong, I wasn’t up for the challenge of biking against the wind.  So, we compromised with a trail walk.

Prickly Pear blooms on the Rosemary Dunes Trail.

What started out as a short stroll of a few miles, turned into a 6.5 mile (10 km) walk.  What can I say — even with the wind blowing strong, a low-humidity day with comfortable temps, blue skies, and sunshine was just too hard to resist.  And who cares if we got a bit sand-blasted on the final leg of our walk along the beach road.  Besides, we were still home by 1:00p … plenty of time to take care of departure chores.

White-topped Sedge

No Lefty at the gator pond today … it was still a little too cool for her to be out and about when we walked by her home, but I managed to capture a new-to-me bird and a-not-so-new-to-me Dasypus novemcinctus along the way.

The red-headed woodpecker is nicknamed the flying checkerboard.
According to All About Birds … This species has declined severely
because of habitat loss and changes to its food supply.

The Dasypus novemcinctus … or, as it is more commonly known, the Nine-Banded Armadillo.
Unlike the ones we saw at Fort Pickens in December, this one was less skittish,
and I managed to see a bit of its face as it munched on grass along the trail.

Next post … from Florida.