Gulf Shores

We spent the week at Gulf Shores State Park in Alabama, about 400 miles south of Braselton.  Because of the current highway issues (collapsed structure on I-85) we decided to leave Braselton Sunday evening to avoid the rush-hour traffic in the Atlanta area.  We spent the evening in Auburn, Alabama and were on the road again bright and early.  Jason travelled with us and we made it to Gulf Shores State Park with plenty of time to visit the beach.  Jason finally had enough sand to play with!  White, sugary sand, sand everywhere, and I mean everywhere!

The first two days in GS we had “Yellow” flags (caution) and the last three days we had “Red” flags (dangerous conditions) flying on the beach.

We had to teach Jason the fine art of sandcastle building (in this case a fortified castle). Jason had more fun destroying it than building it!!  I kept my shirt on at the request of the other beachgoers…

Time to whoop it up a little…

After we wore Jason out (haha) we returned to the MH and watched “Finding Nemo” to end the day…

We stayed away from the beach on the red flag days and spent time with Jason hiking the trails, looking at animals, visiting the warships in Mobile and in the nearby pool.

Gulf Shores has miles of walking/running/biking trails and we managed to walk about four miles with Jason on this one.  We passed this “Tortoise Crossing ” sign and I thought that would be the closest we would be to seeing an actual tortoise, son i snapped tghis picture

Jason soon spotted this guy walking along the trail.  It moved pretty quickly and was about 20″ in diameter.  It walked right up to me as I was taking this shot.  Unfortunately, it did not seem to have any fear of humans.  Jason named it Urtle.

A little further down the trail we came across “Lefty” and her brood.  Reports were that she had eight babies but we could only count six or seven.  They were  kind of hard to count as they would swim into and out of the nearby grass.  Little suckers can move pretty quick!

Here are a couple of the young ones resting on mama’s head.

In addition to the tortoise and alligators, we saw beach mice, a sea turtle, lots and lots of small sand dollars, a shark (courtesy of fish and game), pelicans (Jason got to pet one on the head), a bald eagle and several blue herons.

The first thing in the morning Jason got to see two grouping of fighter jets doing a low fly by down the beach in formation.  It was retty loud but he really liked it.

The weather forecast called for rain and lightning by mid-day,  so we took a road trip to the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, about 50 miles west of Gulf Shores.  This battleship (designated BB 60) is moored in Mobile Bay and is displayed with numerous aircraft, armor and field artillery.

On display were more than 25 aircraft and helicopters, including a couple of F-14s, F-15, many prop-driven warbirds including a Redtail P-51 fighter, Nixon/Ford/Carter/H.W. Bush’s VH1-N/Bell 212 presidential helicopter, designated “Army One”, and of course the B-52 and a CIA A-12/SR-71 Blackbird, (my favorite).

In addition to the battleship, submarine, and aircraft, there was an exhibit of tanks and artillery, including a M-26 Pershing, and M-4 Sherman, M-48-A1 Patton, M-60 A1 and a Russian T-55 from Desert Storm.  Artillery pieces included several 38MM, a 120MM and a 155mm and several personnel carriers.  All said, it was well worth the price of admission but it would realistically take almost a full day (and a lot of walking) to see the whole exhibit.

The USS Alabama, a South Dakota class battleship was commissioned in 1942 and decommissioned in 1947, served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.  On June 19th, 1944, during the last major carrier air battle of the war, the USS Alabama, operating with task group 58.7, provided the first radar confirmed warning to task force 58 of the incoming Japanese attackers.  The Japanese aircraft were detected by shipboard radars at 190 miles.  The battleship earned 9 Battle Stars in the war and measures 680 feet in length and has a beam width of 108 feet. It had a crew of 1,793 persons.  Displacement was listed at 35,000 long tons and it could reach a top speed of almost 32 mph.

We met one of the original USS Alabama sailors before boarding the battleship.

Jason liked the little “big guns”.  I don’t think he realized that the 16 inchers in the turret above were guns.

This is one of the 20 MM anti-aircraft guns with the basic instructions stencilled on the armor plate, pretty simple.  In reality, these 20s were somewhat ineffectual against the Japanese Zeros.  There were many double 40s on deck that actually had the range to take down the approaching aircraft.

Jason and I crawled into the turret on the main deck.  The opening was less than four feet tall and it was somewhat cramped inside.  This is the loading area for the powder and shells for the 16 inch guns.  The shells and powder kegs were delivered via an elevator from decks below us.  I assume that most who worked here were pretty deaf by war’s end.

Going below decks, Jason, tired from the walking, tested the bunks.  They were almost too small for him!  These were stacked four high and there were sometimes 32 of them in a very small room.  I hope the ventilation worked better when the ship was in operation!

Jason is standing with the 16″ shells (black) and some smaller shells (green) several decks down in the turret area.  The wall behind him is a 16″ thick steel wall protecting the turret mechanism.  It extends from the turret on the top deck to the keel of the ship.

After walking three decks of the battleship and taking in the aircraft pavilion, we went to the submarine.  Jason was concerned that there would be a lot of walking in the submarine but we assured him it was substantially smaller.  We did pass a 65 foot aluminum river-type boat built especially for Seal team interdiction.  It was high-speed and specially outfitted with weapons that had of a range of more than 3,000 yards.  It also sported an aft platform for the deployment and retrieval of the team.

Indeed the submarine USS Drum (SS-228) was smaller (in every way) than the nearby battleship. The doors between the compartments were narrow, had a high step over and were less than four feet high.  Basically, if you were big, you could not move on this sub. We were surprised to find that there were sleeping berths in the forward and rear torpedo rooms. We went through the sub from front to back, including the before-mentioned torpedo rooms, the radio room (small), the command center (small) with a 2′ x 2′ hatch leading straight down a ladder to another small room (probably crew quarters), on to the engine room and out a hatch near the rear torpedo room.  There were racks in the empty torpedo tubes!  Jason like the sub, it was small and he could relate.

The next day (another red flag day) we went to a car show at the pier in nearby Orange Beach, and then walked on the docks and ogled at the very large yachts that were docked.  Jason watched at the fish in the water at the edge of the walkway.  Some of the yachts and sport fishing boats were in the 60-70+ foot range and a couple were substantially larger than that.

We stopped for dinner on the way back to Gulf Shores and spent the evening resting and packing for our return to Georgia as Jason played in the sand outside. Gulf Shores is a great place to spend time relaxing and we plan on going back next spring for eight to 10 days to participate in the Gulf Shores Marathon (and relax).