Gulf Shores, AL Vacation 2017

Every time I stand before a beautiful beach, its waves seem to whisper to me: If you choose the simple things and find joy in nature’s simple treasures, life and living need not be so hard. 

~Roxas-Mendoza

I'm just gonna warn you right now, there are enough pictures in this post to make your head swim! But, as I am doing this as a sort of diary entry to myself, I won't apologize for a single one. This was our vacation and it was too nice to leave anything out.

We had originally intended to go to our favorite family spot in Rockport, TX, for this year's vacation. I have a new daughter-in-law that has not yet been introduced to all of the little places and scenes that hold a place in our collective hearts. But a terrible hurricane called Harvey came up, and of all the terrible things, it landed directly on our tiny town with devastating effect. With only three weeks until the date we were scheduled to arrive, the town still did not have electricity or water. With much sadness we were forced to look elsewhere.

Sunset from our porch steps

My moma suggested Gulf Shores, AL. None of us had ever been there, so it would be a fresh locale for everyone. I found a house with the prerequisite fishing pier, and enough bedrooms for hubby and I, my mom and pop, and two married sons. The youngest boy slept up a wooden ladder in the tower! Unfortunately, I didn't even get a picture inside that little room with windows on all sides...

The house was lovely. Up on stilts, it caught every breeze from the ocean, making sitting in the screened porch a most pleasant place to have meals. The inside rooms were also gracious, allowing the nine of us both privacy, and the ability to all be together.

Our house, beach, and pier, aptly named Journey's End. Will slept in the tower!

 The pier extended not just from our house into Mobile Bay, but continued behind us as a raised walkway through an area of native plants and grasses all the way to the street.Across the street was the Ocean. Bay in front of the house, Gulf in the back- best of both worlds

 































 The pier was wider than any we had ever had, making it easy for people to sit together in groups down the way. Hubby bought the "kids" kites and they had lots of fun with them. One of the things I love most about the ocean is the almost constant breeze.

 I expected the coast in Alabama to be much the same as Texas. I was pleasantly surprised to find I was wrong. Where our area of Texas is very open, with the occasional palm or live oak, the Alabama coast was covered, often to the very water's edge, with pines. 

We kayaked to this spot which I called Hermit Crab Beach. I'll explain why later...

That and the undergrowth of saw palmetto and saw grass made it feel very much like the landscape described in Marjorie Rawling's The Yearling, despite the fact that she was writing about her home in Florida. There were even the swampy lakes filled with white waterlilies similar to the ones she mentioned in Cross Creek.

Piney woods and undergrowth of saw palmetto. This is in a nature reserve where the older boys and I walked a two mile hike. We hoped to see gators in Gator Lake, but not so much as a ripple. There were beautiful swaths of water lilies though.

New landscape, new animals. There were wonderful little anole lizards that raced about unchecked. I caught one that was colored the slate grey of the wood he sat on. When held, he puffed up a scarlet throat sack and promptly turned bright green. There were fritillery butterflies unlike the kind that we have at home. I saw a picture of an Alabama Mud Snake, which I really wanted to see. It was black on the back, with a scarlet belly with marks that licked up his sides like flames. But no mud snakes decided to grace me with their presence, no matter how hard I looked.

 Some of the native plants and flowers I recognized from Texas, others were delightfully new. And then there were the sea creatures.

Hermit crab with a sea anemone passenger! This thrilled me so much. Poor crab, his hitchhiker must have weighed almost as much as he did. Do you see the delicate little tentacles extended from the anemone into the water? At one point it also let out a long orange strand that looked like the stamen in a flower.

Releasing Mr. Hermie and companion

 Ocean trout and reds were caught off our pier, as well as my personal favorites- stingrays. I had the opportunity to hand-feed rays at the Corpus Christy Aquarium and had been thrilled by the tickling "mustache" feeling of their comb-like teeth.

While I held this ray's tail spike down with a stick, I put a finger in his gaping mouth and felt his ribbed gums. He didn't care for it, but I was ecstatic as I released him to swim grumpily away.

This is a blue crab that William Cole caught. It is a female with her egg sack firmly secured to the hairs of her belly. Each egg was the size of a pin head and there can be 2-8 MILLION!

The very rocks were teaming with life... 

Something intriguing that I did not see, but at least got close to, was the endangered Alabama Beach Mouse. How could you not greatly desire to catch a glimpse of this long snooted fellow?

 I saw lots of mouse sized holes and they were surrounded by teeny-tiny footy prints. Even that was exciting for me.

 On the beach there were very few shells compared to our Texas haunt. But I was more on the lookout for evidence of creatures. My favorite souvenirs are ones from nature. I found several fascinating skulls that washed up on the beach. They had a bony ridge on the top of the head and no sign of jaw or even teeth holes. I joked to the boys that I had found remnants of an aquatic dinosaur!

Some of my found treasures

 Then my moma pointed out a fish skeleton that had obviously been filleted and washed onto shore. I decided to pull off the skin and see if I could take that skull also. Lo and behold, I found that the upper skull portion was my "bony dinosaur", but this one had an upper and lower jaw full of sharp teeth that attached into hollows like a knee joint.

My original skull is under all the scales. But this has the addition of an attached upper and lower jaw- filled with sharp teeth!

Nothing could be done but the hubby took me down to the marina to ask the fishing boat captains what I had found. Yep. Me, with a bony skull in one hand and a ziplock bag with a scaly decapitated fish-head in the other. Needless to say, they were taken a bit off guard. They all had different ideas as to what it could be, and didn't believe they were the same fish at all, 'till I showed them. One guy admitted that he didn't know because he'd never seen them with their meat off before! That's what I think is so amazing about bones. We take for granted what we can see on the outside and never consider the amazing something that might be on the inside. (This also goes for looking at people...) Turns out the hubby found a site of sport fish skeletons and we confirmed it as a Cubana Red Snapper. I felt like a forensic scientist :).

We went to a tiny zoo and some of the kids got to touch sloths, other the boas and baby crocs. I was pretty much taken with this little blond skunk. I think he and I could have been great friends.

My youngest and I went in together on a two person inflatable kayak before we left home. It was $79 dollars on eBay. You can't even rent one for a week for that price. It's made of super durable lifeboat material and airs up in minutes, plus it came with two collapsible oars. I can't swim and have a strong fear of deep water, but I was not going to let that stop me from adventuring on the sea! Turns out I felt as safe and steady as a cork in this little boat. It was only much later that I realized we were paddling over water rife with sharks and perhaps even gators...some things are better left unknown!

Will and I kayaked to a beach I named Hermit Crab Beach in an upper photo. Why did I call it that? When we went every single tree, stump, and rock was encrusted with hermit crabs. It was incredible! Think of one of those vases or mirrors you have seen that is entirely covered with a layer of beautiful shells. This was exactly like that, only all of the shells had owners. I lamented the fact I did not have my camera, but I had been afraid to carry it in the boat. Days later, after regaling everyone about the wonder, I finally managed to sneak my moma onto the beach by creeping through a person's yard and out through the scrub. The hermies were gone! All but this small and (compared to when I saw them) insignificant amount of crabs. Was it a matter of tides, mating season, hermit crab reunion day? Whatever it was, I will have to just keep the image of them decorating the shore like crusted jewels.

Hermit crabs on a stump

William Cole and Pop talking about serious fish-type things

  My youngest son's greatest desire was to catch a shark. He caught a nurse shark in Florida and we all admired it greatly before it was turned back into the sea. This time every lure he set out was either broken or straightened out completely by something enormous and strong. "I am both disappointed and concerned." he said. When we asked the local mariners what it might be, they declared it could be anything from a shark to a gator. There are monsters out there, they declared.

We definitely knew sharks were near to us.  My oldest and youngest went out in the kayak and landed on a deserted beach. Devin found a 3 1/2 foot shark freshly washed up on shore. He boated it home as a gift for me, but I could see how very much he loved it. When I said he should keep it, he didn't protest much.

My, what big eyes you have! (And beautiful ones, too!)

Here you can perfectly see the "pores" that decorate the shark skin like tattoos. These are actually sensors that pick up electric impulses from animals. Humans emit these impulses as well. That is how a shark can sense that a creature is wounded and go in for the kill. Fascinating!

Many an hour was spent finding a 4 foot glass vase at Hobby Lobby, filling the jar with almost 5 gallons of alcohol, and then a trip to the plumbing supply to find a cap for the top. Now he has a perfect memento of our trip. I'm only a little jealous...

Bay in front, ocean in back. Natural habitat all between. This is where we ended up when we would walk across to the Gulf side. Some days the waves were so strong they would knock you down and roll you like a barrel.

Each kiddo had to be buried at one time or another. Here moma takes a picture of my daughter-in-law, Emily entombed in sand. To the far left is my oldest son, Devin, then his wife, Savannah. Next is the youngest, Will, then Seth grinning down at his trapped bride.

Yep, moma will want to hurt me when she sees this. She likes her picture taken just about as much as I do. But I think it's a great picture of her.

I think it was good that we went to the Gulf Shores Pier on our last day in Alabama. Otherwise, we might not have played in the water quite so readily. You see, sharks were everywhere. The fishermen said the hard part was not to catch fish, but to get them in before the sharks ate them. And we were about 20 miles from where we swam all week. Gulp.

On the lookout for sharks!

We also had jellyfish encounters. Again, we didn't usually see them, but felt the sting afterward. From the pier everything was visible.

Even a gorgeous Spotted Eagle Ray. You can't tell from the photo, but this lovely was about about 3 feet wide. And so, so graceful.

Below is the skyline looking back toward Gulf Shores. ( note- The little girl in the very first photo was on the beach below the Gulf Shores Pier. She was twirling so sweetly in her little white dress I couldn't resist a picture. I wish that I could give her folks a copy of it.)

We took a little detour looking for a fish market and found the delightful community of Bon Secour. I wish we had found it sooner so we could have explored. The area we stayed in was mainly housed with pastel colored beach houses like many other coastal towns. The homes in Bon Secour looked like authentic homesteads, tin roofs and all. I love the live oaks with draping swags of Spanish moss.

And then it was time to head home. I am always ready to come back to my dear little house. I can't imagine staying away more than a week. On the way back we stopped and bought sweet taters from a roadside truck so that I could make sweet potato pie with a reminder of our trip. Passing cotton fields shorn of their crop, we stopped and gathered a bouquet from the uncut corners. I can't decide whether it should go in a vase or wreath. 

The drive home always seems so long. But then we get to our dirt road, then to the hill where you can look down into the valley where our house is nestled away in the trees. The feeling of coming home makes any vacation sweeter.

Lovely memories of times together and so many new things learned and seen. A trip should be a chance to find a new part of yourself, whether it is as far away as Alabama, or as close as the next dirt road.

 The ocean stirs the heart, inspires the imagination and brings eternal joy to the soul. 

~Wyland