Seeing Daufins in Mobile Alabama

“Sweet home Alabama” is what it said on the sign as we drove by whooping and yelling. I knew being at the Miller’s house would be fun, but I never imagined what was to come. First of all, I had no idea they had a dog, much less three! It was insanity! And awesome! And I loved every minute of it! And I’m fresh out of exclamations! Anyway before I get to that I’m going to go back to Daufin island. It was really fun on Dauphin Island. We were in walking distance of a beach so obviously we went there more than once. We went there about 3 times I think. The first time we were just playing around with the waves and Dacen was digging holes in the sand. The second time was about the same. Then one day we went to this place that was like an aquarium. One difference was that for free you could go at to a thing called the touch tank. It had a hammer head shark, some rays and another sort of things that look like rays. It was cool touching the shark school touching the rays, but the shark was just especially awesome. It wasn’t as big as you’d think. It was pretty small. Almost as long as my arm. After we got kind of bored of petting the shark and the others, we decided to go to the beach. This time the waves are a little bit bigger and we decided to make a kind of Lake by just digging in the sand. After our first failure I decided to try something new. I started building a wall of sand around the lake. It kept out all the water until one really big wave got in. But didn’t flood for a long time. Once it was time to go we sped up the process of destroying the wall. That was just as fun as building it in some ways.

Okay so next we went to Mobile Alabama where the Millers live. As we pulled in 3, count them 3 dogs came to greet us. Two medium sized ones and one great Dane. Bill and Karen brought us in and the adults just chatted for a while as we played with the dogs. The dogs were really fun but the Great Dane named Luke was a big baby. He is only 9 months old so he gets that. He was already huge so I can’t imagine what he’s going to be like when he grows up.

Finally, Bill said “Alright! Who’s ready for a boat ride?” I sprinted to the boat and was the first one in. We fvshoomed across the river but then had to slow down because of a marina and bridge. Its a good thing we didn’t speed up because we never would have seen the dolphin. My mom shrieked! Dolphin! It got so close I almost could’ve touched it. That was an amazing experience. When we sped up the waves made it bumpy which was super fun. After a while we got to a restaurant and ate this really good food. Then we got boiled peanuts, lost Karen’s pants, and headed back. I was really excited for the next day, because we would be at the Millers’ house while Mama and Papa had a night on the town. I could hardly sleep that night because it was gonna be AWESOME!!! basically we got there and we played with the dogs again but when dinner was ready, we got to eat in front of the TV. The only TV dinners I’ve had is when we go to a sports bar and football and hockey are the only things that are on. Don’t get me wrong, I love football and hockey, but that isn’t the same as a good old-fashioned TV dinner. we probably watched, like, four hours of TV. The next day we woke up and headed to Florida.

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.

Beautiful 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.

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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