Gulf State Park, AL

We were fortunate to share a few days of our stay at Gulf State Park with our dear friend Sue Evans for a few days. We had hoped for some days of birding in this park that includes some of Alabama's great birding trails, since we are on the cusp here of the start of the northward bird migration.  Mother Nature, however had other plans - the weather was too bitterly cold and windy to spend the days slowly navigating hiking/birding trails.  Instead we spent one whole day at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL.

How many of you knew that Lake Michigan was where hundreds of Naval Aviators were trained and certified to fly from aircraft carriers, and that as a result the lake is littered with many training aircraft that crashed into the lake either on take-off or landing on the modified training carriers?  There is an excellent display and movie of that war effort at this museum.

Another day we visited Fort Morgan, a Civil-War-Era fortification,  for about an hour (all we could bear given the cold wind off the bay).

John and Sue at Fort Morgan.  Lots more arches.

Little crab climbing around on a fort battery wall

Good play of light in one of the old windows in the fort

There are oil rigs off the coast in every direction:

After Sue left to move on to her place in Florida, we spent a few more days exploring Gulf State Park and the surrounding area, and found it so pleasing that we put our names on their waiting list for 2015 winter camping, hoping to return here for a longer stay next year.  Lovely bike and walking trails, wonderful clean and updated facilities, and very pleasant and compatible campers - we had a number of enjoyable conversations with others staying at the park during these few days.

One of the joys of travel is hearing the travel tales of other campers. A couple in a site across from ours was driving a contraption the likes of which we had not seen anywhere before. Talking with them we discovered that they designed and created it on their own; they added a semi's sleeper cab portion to their Mercedes truck which was outfitted with a specially long and strong trailer frame behind, then added stainless steel storage units about 2 feet deep and 2 feet high along each side of that frame, on which they placed a fairly standard longer truck camper unit.  If this description reminds you of the Johnny Cash song "One Piece at a Time", you would be picturing it correctly. :)  This couple had been traveling full-time in this interesting contraption for the last 8 years, and generously shared information about best fly-fishing places they experienced in Idaho, where the rainbow and cutthroat trout they described rivaled what John has experienced in New Zealand.  Another trip to plan for another time.  So many places to visit and/or revisit….so little time.