I first met Bill Miller at bootcamp several years back (exactly this time of year too). We were randomly placed at tables for meal time and Bill and I were put at a table together. That weekend had a huge impact on me as I believe it did for many men including Bill. Long story short, Bill and Karen Miller served our church and community in so many ways…it seemed like they were involved in everything. Then one summer day in 2014 I’m riding my bike home from work and I pass them riding their bikes out by Golden Ponds. We chat for a bit and I share with them our family’s plan to travel the country in a 5th wheel. Turns out, they’ve done the same thing….several times! Bill ends up in a major leadership role in our church’s construction project to build a new facility while at the same time he and Karen buy a house in Mobile AL and sell their one in CO. And that is how we came to plan a stop in Mobile AL on our adventure across the USA.
Month: February 2016
A little taste of home!
I can’t find the words to explain how great this day was! It was peaceful and exciting and fun and relaxing and just filled me up!!
I was so excited to see Bill and Karen Miller. They are friends from church who had just moved full time down to Mobile, AL. As much as I love traveling and seeing new places, I also realized a couple of weeks ago that the familiar is super nice! I was looking forward to hanging out with them. They had offered a few ideas of things to go do and see. We had a lot of big days of site seeing just before that in New Orleans, so I decided a day on the boat would be fun and then just hanging out with them would be great. Some down time was needed and a boat ride would be new and different for the kids.
They live right on the water and I LOVE the water! Their house is so lovely with a wonderful, peaceful view of the water that borders two sides of the house. Oh and they have 3 dogs – one for each of our kids to love on! 🙂 I can totally see why they live here!
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The boat ride was even better than I expected! And the kids each said the same thing. We had such a blast! It was fun watching the kids enjoy it. Everything from the wild bumps to laying down, almost napping during the calm. I had no idea how far we were going or how long we would be on the boat. I was happy with whatever Bill and Karen had planned. We started down the Dog River and they said we would go out on Mobile Bay as they often saw dolphin there. I thought to myself “pleeeeease let us see a dolphin!” And a good look would be really great too!” I still had no idea how big the Bay was. Right when we entered the Bay – and I mean right when we entered – a dolphin appeared right next to the boat! And then it surfaced again even closer! I barely missed recording it both times on my phone – darn. But it was soooo cool! It really was a fabulous welcome to the Bay.
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Dauphin Island
Somewhere along the way I’d heard about Dauphin Island and since its close to Mobile where we have friends we wanted to visit we decided to check it out. We made reservations for 3 nights at the campground on the island. Its a pretty decent campground and the price was fair (more than a state park but less than many private parks)…it helped that we just had a water and electric site with no sewer. Lots of campers seem like they are here for a long time….not full time, but snowbird types. But the crown jewel of this campground was that it was just a short walk to a really nice beach.
Dacen covered the details of our time on the island pretty well in his blog post but here I’ll throw in a few thoughts of my own.
Swimming With The Shark
Well, we didn’t actually swim with sharks, but mom really wanted to take us to an estuary.It was supposedly 2 miles to the estuary around along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and back to Ava. It only felt like 1 mile though.
At the estuary we all really enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it the most. In the touch tank (which was about 50 feet in circumference, about 3 feet deep, and was filled with saltwater) there were all fish. We were allowed to touch the animals in the well named touch tank. There was a hammerhead which was very kind, lots of sting rays which loved to cling to walls of the touch tank, sea skates which loved to stay at the bottom of the touch tank, and lots of other fish that we didn’t know what types they were.
Do you like squares? I like Nike.
We learned that sharks, sting rays, and sea skates do not have a swim bladder so they have to move at an angle up and down and side to side at an angle, unlike fish who do have a swim bladder so they can swim straight up and down and side to side. In Mobile Bay, there are 17 discovered species of sharks. Sting rays have a more round body and give life birth and sea skates have more of a triangle body and lay eggs. However, they both have barbs on there tails.
On the walk to the beach we saw lots of pelicans…one was eating a snack.
–Dacen
Another Surprise!
We tried to have a “down day” to get some traditional school work done. I do have a list of what the kids’ classmates are studying, so I’m trying to make sure they learn those things as well as all of the other stuff we do and see along our trip.
Dacen, Brielle, and I headed to the local library to try to take advantage of free wi-fi. Until this trip, I didn’t realize I was so in love with library decor. This one had cute benches/seats in the kids’ area.
Bayou Segnette
While in New Orleans we stayed in the well known (to full time RVers) Bayou Segnette State Park. Its only 20 minutes to downtown and 10 minutes from Walmart, restaurants, fuel, etc. It had free wifi (but its pretty jankity…don’t count on it for work but at least they are trying). The sites were nice but beware of the “double site”…these are literately double wide sites and the hookups are both together. This would be great for two rigs wanting to camp together but not so much for us. The staff had no problem with us picking something different, so we did. Bathrooms were perfectly adequate and had nice hot water. AND….are you ready for this? FREE LAUNDRY! Its not like laundromats are that expensive but this sort of thing just warms my penny pinching heart! We had been so busy in New Orleans we hadn’t even checked out this state park where we were living so we decided to explore a bit one afternoon by bike.
New Orleans
Steph typing for Brielle:
New Orleans has so many fun things to do! Music playing, restaurants to go to and yummy food. We just love New Orleans!
New Orleans is the longest place we’ve stayed already. But we might stay longer somewhere else.
WWII Museum
Huck heard the WWII museum was phenomenal and it was! A very nice old man summoned us as we entered the parking lot next to the museum. He had only been at the museum for a few minutes and he wanted us to use his parking space, thus saving us $10 in parking! What a sweet man! [Huck here…yeah, that right there made my day. Its only $10. But when you are as tight as I am and you are bleeding money like we are this is reason to celebrate]
Valentine’s Day in the Big Easy
The lady at the Visitor’s Center told me if we wanted to do something truly unique to New Orleans we should Google Second Lines and try to attend one. I had read a little about it, so knowing HOW to find one excited me! I found out there was one scheduled for Sunday, so off we went. We had a loose idea of what might happen, but we still didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t know if it would be best to be at the beginning or at a stop along the route. Like everything else so far we do a little lose planning or research and then kind of wing it or go with the flow. Basically we follow the saying “hold your plans loosely.”
Second line and gardens
Happy Valentines day! Steph decorated the trailer with hearts and a paper heart chain and the younger two kids made drawings for the family. Caden created a compliment box…it dispenses a piece of paper with compliment on it for you to give to someone. It was quite a hit and Dacen and Brielle both started writing new compliments to add to the box!
Steph had found a second line parade to go to so we navigated back into town. But we decided to try to find parking closer to the parade. We found street parking right by Louis Armstrong park and when I went to pay the machine it said, free parking on Sundays. SCORE!!