At 7:30 this morning I was sitting outside, drinking my second cup of coffee, listening to the birds and watching the sun come up and hit Lake Seminole. The temperature was 67 degrees. If I were still living in our stick house in Centennial, the temperature would have been 33. No wonder we are living here on the road.Monday morning we left Alabama and drove to Florida, to the East Bank Campground on the shore of Lake Seminole, a Corps of Engineers lake in Georgia and Florida. We have never spent the night in our RV in Florida, so we were looking forward to adding that state to our map of places where we have been. Unfortunately, shortly before we drove into the campground, we encountered a sign that said we were going into Georgia! We will have to wait till Sunday to add Florida, I guess.Monday night there was a beautiful sunset over the lake.
Yesterday morning I was delighted to see this Great Blue Heron feeding along the water's edge.
Sunday, on our last day in Alabama, we drove to Dauphin Island. That is one of the major areas being impacted by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. From the shore we could see several drilling rigs that are still in operation.
The beaches have beautiful white sand.
People were out enjoying the sun and sand.
At the same time, boats and other equipment was assembled, waiting for deployment to clean the sand if the oil slick arrived.
As we drove onto the island, we saw these booms floating in the surf, hopefully able to keep any oil away from the beach.
And then we saw this stuff at the edge of the water. It looked like a kitchen scrubby, but is really a special kind of boom meant to catch any incoming tar balls, like had been found the day before.
While we were on Dauphin Island, we toured Fort Gaines, built in 1821 to protect Mobile Bay. It was the center of an 1862 Civil War battle, when Admiral Farragut of the US Navy was reported to have said, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead."
As we crossed Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, we have driven over miles and miles of bridges. We thought it was expensive to build interstate highways in the mountains of Colorado. Building them across the swamps, bayous, rivers and bays of the southern river deltas must cost even more. This is the bridge from mainland Alabama to Dauphin Island.
They tell us that part of exploring a new area is to try the local foods. We started doing that here in Mobile on Thursday when we visited Felix's Fish Camp, a restaurant near the USS Alabama Memorial Park.
The strip of highway east of the Alabama is lined with very popular fish restaurants. A friend had recommended Felix's and we were not disappointed. We enjoyed the fish platter with sides of hush puppies and fried green tomatoes. We assumed Felix was the owner. That is, until Friday when we learned Felix is probably King Felix III, king of Mardi Gras in Mobile. See this informationFriday we visited downtown Mobile. We parked near Bienville Square
an oasis in the middle of town. That day there was a caterer serving food under the glorious live oak trees. The square, which is named after Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville a colonizer, born in Montreal, Quebec and an early, repeated governor of French Louisiana, appointed 4 separate times during 1701-1743. It also includes this ornate band stand.
Many of the downtown buildings had these balconies.
They must be a Southern thing. In Colorado we deal with wind chill. It may be 30 degrees outside, but a wind will make it feel like 22. Earlier this week the weather forecast here said the high would be 86 but feel like it was in the 90s. when I woke up this morning at 6 am it was 75 outside. Can you imagine that? With no air conditioning, people in these old buildings would need balconies so they could cool off.We visited the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Look at the wonderful ceiling.
We also stopped by the Fort Conde Museum. It is a replica of the original 1720s French Fort Condé at the site, also known as Fort Carlota (under Spanish rule) and also Fort Charlotte (under British or American rule). During the American Revolution the French sided with the American revolutionaries and helped defeat the British, who held Mobile at that time.The museum also had a wonderful exhibit of historic photos of African Americans in Alabama over the years. It was moving and very interesting, maybe the high point of our visit to downtown.Downtown Mobile is interesting and a lot of work is being done to make it vibrant again. There are a lot of beautiful old buildings. And a few very modern new buildings. I found the contrast of the old and new a bit jarring.
Before coming back to the RV, we drove on Scenic 98 along the Eastern Shore, a beautiful area of homes on tree-lined streets along the eastern edge of Mobile Bay. What a treat to see this area! We turned around at the Fly Creek Restaurant and Marina. There we saw this forest of sailing ship masts
and this fishing boat going out into the Bay. It may not be able to go very far into the Gulf of Mexico if the oil slick comes this way.
Today we ate lunch at The Brick Pit,
a barbecue restaurant in Mobile that has been featured on the Food Network, where they won the Best Tailgating competition, and on the Travel Channel. We enjoyed the pulled pork plate. The restaurant's slogan is
and over the years they have invited patrons to write on the walls.
It is quite a place.After lunch we went to see Art in the Park at the nearby town of Foley. We saw a large collection of artist booths in a nice small town. Look at the great flower baskets hanging from the light poles.
We didn't buy anything except a bottle of water and an apple fritter. But we saw lot of paintings, jewelry, pottery and glass work and clothing. These whirly-gigs were especially fun.
Foley also has a great model train set-up.
How is this for a booth where the local radio station was broadcasting?
The battleship USS Alabama is a major tourist attraction here in Mobile, where it is berthed in Mobile Bay. Commissioned in 1942 and taken out of service in 1946, after World War II, the ship is impressive and a really informative museum today. Look at how massive the battleship is. It is so large, we couldn't get far enough away to take a picture of the whole thing.
We saw the chow line
the brig
the barbershop
and where the crew slept.
We learned a lot about life in the navy and about World War II. Did you know that sailors weren't allowed to own civilian clothes, making it more difficult for them to desert? When they were discharged they were given a special emblem to wear on the uniform to show they were legally away from their post. We learned that a battleship had to be self-sufficient, making all the parts needed for repairs, sewing uniforms, even storing potatoes. One hundred gallons of ice cream were dispensed daily to the crew.It was also impressive to think how much time, effort and expense our country went to producing ships to fight that war and how few years they were in service.This is a "bridge eye view" of downtown Mobile from the top deck of the Alabama.
In addition to the Alabama, the Battleship Memorial Park includes numerous aircraft and the US submarine Drum.
Submarines are small and crowded. We had once toured a Soviet sub at Long Beach, CA, and it was tiny. The Drum was larger, but space is at a premium and gauges and switches and wheels are everywhere. And look at those doorways, called hatches. They are really difficult to go through.
Remember the phrase "up periscope" from old movies? This is the periscope, but you couldn't move it or see anything through it.
Believe me, climbing the ladders from one level to another is even more difficult than crawling though the hatches from one room to another.
The memorial park also includes lots of old aircraft. This frowning plane is one of the first things you see.
Here are a few of the planes in the hangar.
Overall, visiting the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park was well worth our time. And the lunch we ate in the cafeteria was really good!
We aren't football fans, but for those who are, that should tell you we are in Alabama. In Texas they fly the Lone Star flag. In Alabama they have license plate holders and license plates and other items that reference their favorite college football team with sayings like "Roll Tide." Tuesday we left Fontainebleu State Park in Louisiana and drove across a little piece of Mississippi to Alabama, where we are staying in the Maeher State Park on Mobile Bay. Alabama is the 20th state in the Union where we have stayed in state parks. What a wonderful thing for RVers.As we drove through Mississippi and into Alabama, our first question was, "where is Lady Bird Johnson now?" Look at all of these billboards.
Before we even finished setting up, I noticed our 18-year-old gray tabby cat, PC, who has diabetes and has been on insulin for six years, wasn't doing well. He was nearly unconscious on the floor of the RV. I called John in and we decided to take him to a vet. As we drove out, we asked the woman in the gate house where we would find one. She gave us two locations. We decided to check out the first and if it didn't look good we would go on to the second.The first one we came to, Bay Animal Clinic North, in Spanish Fort, looked good, so we pulled in. When we walked in with PC, we told them we thought our cat was dying. They quickly showed us into an exam room, then took PC to be examined by the vet, Steven Parvin, who was just finishing up surgery. In a short while Dr. Parvin came in to talk to us, then soon they brought PC back to us and we talked to Dr. Parvin even more. I will skip all the details, but the bottom line is, PC's blood sugar level had crashed and he would have died if we hadn't done something about it. By today, after glucose tests and other things over four days, it looks like PC may have reverted, a term meaning he may no longer be diabetic. His blood glucose levels have been checked daily and he has not had an insulin shot since Tuesday morning. He is alert, no longer staggering around and better than he has been for months. Since he no longer needed insulin, his shots made his glucose levels crash.We can't say enough good things about Dr. Parvin and the other staff at Bay Animal Clinic North. Just a big thank you for all you did.
What was that yellow ball we saw on the horizon? How did the blue ocean get overhead? That is what we felt today, after four days of gray skies and intermittent drizzle. We thought we might mold. Or begin to grow spanish Moss like you see on this splendid Live Oak.
Finally, the sun came out and we saw some blue sky. Fontainebleau State Park is beautiful, with Magnolia trees beginning to bloom and access to Lake Ponchartrain. Anyone who watched the news during the 2005 aftermath of Hurricane Katrina must remember the talk of this lake. New Orleans is on the south side of the lake and we are on the North Shore. During the cloudy weather of the past few days, it was still warm, but there was wind and that produced waves on the lake.
Today the sun was out and the water was calm enough for fishing boats to be out. In the distance you can see the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway, the bridge that links New Orleans to the North Shore. At 24 miles, it is the longest bridge in the world that crosses only water.
We think this is a great park, with lots of beautiful grounds. But where we are parked, in the "old" campground, it feels like a commercial park with side-by-side hookups, which we hate. This is what if looked like from Friday evening through mid-day Sunday.
It is much better today.
Saturday evening as we walked around the "new" campground we saw this group of people sitting with this impressive trophy. Dennis and Vikki May of Smokin' N The Dark Bar-B-Q has just won the Covington BBQ competition. We wished we had known about it. If so, we would have visited. 
What we did do on Saturday was bike 14 miles on the Tammany Trace, a Rails to Trails bike trail that passes through Fontainebleau. It is on the old right-of-way of the Illinois Central Railroad. I couldn't figure our why the Illinois Central was in Louisiana until I discovered the rail line ran from Illinois south to the Gulf Coast.John took a picture of me riding down the picturesque trail.
At one point the trail crosses the Bayou Lacombe and there is a draw bridge to allow boats to pass on the bayou. It was installed in 2008.
We also saw these lovely water lilies. 
This chimney is part of the ruins of the Fontainebleau Sugar Mill from the Fontainebleau Plantation operated by Bernard de Marigny from 1828 to 1852. The park here is located on part of his extensive plantation lands. 
We spent over five months in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, all areas heavily influenced by Spanish colonial efforts. Since crossing into Louisiana, we have found ourselves in an area more influenced by France. It has been an interesting change. What will we find as we travel farther east?
