Late Vacation Photos

We have pictures on too many devices now (2 phones, 1 tablet, 2 cameras, 2 computers) so I keep forgetting to do blog entries and when I do remember, I can’t find the pictures I’m looking for. I need a better system!

Anyway, here are a few pictures from our trip to Cancun earlier this month.

When we arrived, we had lunch at our favorite lunch place with our favorite waiter. Doug ordered the grouper and got the WHOLE grouper.

We spent the whole week before watching a Tropical Wave turn into a Tropical Depression turn into Hurricane Earl. Thankfully it passed before we got there and considerably away from Cancun.

We arrived on the day of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies so there were lots of special things including this rice art on our bed.

They had a big Olympics-theme event planned for the pool area. Unfortunately it downpoured (thanks Earl) just as the party was getting started. 

The grounds are just as beautiful in the dark as they are during the day.

The hallways have glass walls so we went to the top floor to check out the view of the ocean and the bay at the same time.

It was pretty hot (OK – really, really hot) but that didn’t stop us from having a great time. The pools were pretty much bath temperature.

 

We spent most of our time relaxing in our beachfront cabana.

The food was delicious as always and there were lots of special touches.

We planned our dinners around which restaurant had live music. The mariachi was great!

Our “Suite” sign made a return appearance!

I tried to memorize this view so I can think about it when it is cold and dark in January!

Windows

Having new windows installed is not nearly as exciting as going on vacation but it was time to replace a few of the originals.

Makiko, Johanna, Johanna and Christoph – you will be happy to know that the windows in “your” room now go both up and down.

And we can open the window in our office now too.

The best parts of the whole project are the new windows in the kitchen. They crank out and the breeze is even better than before.

At no point in this project did we want to do it ourselves so we were happy to work with Gladstone’s again. Larry the Window Guy did a great job!

Closing out the Southern Circle Tour

We left the beach after 3 fun days and nights and made the short drive to Mobile, Alabama. We didn’t have any firm plans for our day/night in Mobile other than to visit Oakleigh House. We had a great tour and our retired chemist tour guide described everything in great detail. He took his job seriously.

We checked out the downtown area and then drove out on the causeway where the water is about 6 inches below the road level. We wondered how often the road is closed due to flooding.

We found the 5 Rivers Nature Center, another free state park type place. They had a great education/interpretive center with a few live animals on display. This is as close as we got to an alligator. He (the 1 foot variety) was kind of cute.

We enjoyed dinner at Ed’s Seafood Shed, a local delicious place. While we had dinner, we saw a couple alligators swim by and watched a gorgeous sunset.

The next day we went back to Five Rivers for the Delta Safari tour. We hoped to see a bunch of gators (from afar). While we only saw one, we learned a lot about the birds, plants and history in the area from the naturist and the very entertaining driver.

We let the GPS lead us to a BBQ restaurant and we hit the jackpot with Dick Russell’s. We asked if they were a chain and the waitress assured us we found their one and only location.

We took a quick detour into a very rainy Kiln, MIssissippi where we experienced the hometown of legendary Brett Favre.

We had a fantastic trip. It had a nice mix of experiences and we would recommend Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to anyone!

To The Beach!

We met up with our favorite Texans at Gulf Shores, Alabama for a few days of a “vacation from our vacation”.

The beach was beautiful white sand and very clean. The dunes were very pretty but the walk through the sand got a little long. It wasn’t unlike walking through unshoveled snow but much more pleasant.

We stayed at a large resort called Gulf Shores Plantation. It had a beautiful beach and more pools than we could even get to in our 3 night stay. People traveled here with an impressive amount of equipment – there were so real beach pros!

The waves were just right for playing around and everyone had fun in the water.

We collected a tremendous amount of seashells during the day as well as on an evening walk. All 12 of us went to Lulu’s for dinner one evening. Lulu is Jimmy Buffett’s sister so there were margaritas for the adults and sand for the kids.

There was plenty of time for digging a huge hole complete with a moat and all kinds of digging.

Apparently the whole was still there when we returned from Lulu’s around 10pm (some girls talked their dad into going down to check)

but was long gone when we went down to check the next morning. (Not to worry…This is fake crying)

There was a pond at the edge of our parking lot with these important directions.

Thanks for the beach fun!

Montgomery to Florabama

After a delicious dinner and beer at the local Brewpub, we went to the Montgomery Biscuits baseball game. The Biscuits are the AA team affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays.

They were playing the Tennessee Smokies who, judging by their performance that evening, are not very good. We left when it was 11-0 in the 5th inning.

It was a beautiful night and we enjoyed the game. It was a very local crowd so it was fun to listen in on the conversations. And – yes – we bought biscuits at the Biscuit game.

It was also “Church Night” and during the game they listed the churches who brought groups. Almost all Baptists. No Lutherans. We knew we weren’t in Minnesota anymore.

The next morning, we had a leisurely breakfast and headed further south on our way to meet Steve, Liz and the girls and the McCumbers… Hi Jenny!… at the beach. We could have gone directly there but we decided to take a 20 minute detour into Florida.

Several people I work with recommended we go to “Florabama” on the Florida-Alabama state line. It was quite a complex. Wikipedia describes it as

“a honky-tonk, oyster bar, beach bar, and Gulf Coast cultural landmark, touted as being America's "Last Great Roadhouse". I know, Wikipedia isn’t an official source but this sums it up pretty well.

That’s the honky-tonk and those are bras hanging from the ceiling. We had some mediocre fried food for lunch on the beachfront patio. I think we were there about 12 hours too early to get the full experience.

Kenny Chesney has a song about Florabama and these are the lyrics made out of license plate parts. Check it out on YouTube. I think he nailed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENhafhV2P0