Saturday, January 31, 2015

January 31, 2015 Gulf State Park, Alabama

It was sunny and windy. Only got up to the low 60’s, but was not too bad out of the sun.

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I rode my bike in to harvest some long leaf pine needles. The trees are gorgeous. They can grow up to 130 feet tall. This is a little one. The needles are average of 15 inches, some as long as 20 inches. In this photo if my fingers were touching the trunk the needles would be up to my elbow.  Really long. These bundles of needles are on the picnic table and about as wide as it is. They are tied with grocery bags, they are too big for rubber bands. About 4-6 inches in diameter. Fabulous for baskets.

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Red curly dock blossoms. I walked down to the beach for sunset again. I just love the white sand.

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The sand kind of looks like  corduroy- groomed snow. Share the beach, sea turtles lay eggs here.

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There were a bunch of these red things in the sand, I think they are petals from a silk flower. More white sand.

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Moon rising and sun setting on the beach.

Friday, January 30, 2015

January 28-30, 2015 Gulf State Park, Alabama

Another short drive from eastern Mississippi to Eastern Alabama shoreline.

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Downtown Mobile, Alabama as we pass by. The bus at Gulf State Park, Alabama. We have stayed here before. This time the park is practically full. We were only able to get a premium spot instead of a cheap on- all of them look pretty premium anyway, and only for a week. They are full after that. We are on the canal between the two lakes, that are across the street from the gulf.

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The white sand beaches are incredible.  The top of the second photo is looking west from the fishing pier into downtown Gulf Shores, the bottom half is looking east at Gulf state park beach. Thank heavens for the parks with the unspoiled beaches.

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Lots of shells on the beach. John was taking this photo of the pelican, and I happened to be in the background.

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Bliss is walking on the beach. There are miles of lovely  paved bike paths in the park too.

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This beware of Alligator sign is on the bike path. I didn’t see any today. John loves this park because they let you wash your bus. Most of them don’t. While I was biking he washed and waxed the roof.  He put 4 coats of wax on and got blisters on his knees. He really knows how to have a good time.

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My demented husband, I was taking a photo of him BBQing and look what he does.  I made it down to the beach at the end of the sunset tonight. 

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The white sand and pink sky are beautiful together.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

January 26-27, 2015 Ocean Springs, Mississippi to Alabama

We went to the Walter Anderson art museum today. Walter is a famous artist from Ocean Springs. He painted what he saw in area. He was eccentric, schizophrenic they said, but made beautiful art. Very cool patterns and colors.  He spent a lot of his time on Horn Island, one of the barrier islands off the coast, camped by himself drawing and painting.

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He did this  wood carving of a swimmer, below is the murals he painted on the walls of the community center-now part of the museum. The two photos to the right are details from the center’s murals.

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This room was found in his house after his death in a locked room. One of the residential streets in Ocean Springs. Beautiful live oak trees.

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After the Walter Anderson art museum we visited the Moran art gallery. John is not related to them as far as he knows. Joe Moran is a well known artist from the area, his children now paint and run the gallery.  There were paintings of ships and scenes from around the area. Ocean Springs used to have a medicinal hot springs called Marble springs.  All the houses drilling wells around it lowered the water table, so the springs stopped flowing. Here is part of where the pools were.

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The next day we moved to outside Moss Point, Mississippi and stayed at a Harvest host site at Gulf Coast Gator Ranch. Harvest host allows us to stay at a number of small winery’s, farms etc for one night free. In exchange we partake in whatever the site has to offer. The Gator Ranch is 400 acres that have been in the family for generations. They harvest alligator eggs from their land, raise the alligators and release them back into the swamp. They also donate gators all over to zoos and schools etc. They support themselves with a ‘gator walk’ and airboat rides. We did both. Here is the bus at the Gator ranch.

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John is pointing too where the waterline was when Hurricane Katrina came through. It demolished their area. They have now rebuilt, but the gator walk is shorter since Katrina took out the boardwalks.  Before Katrina they had 170 alligators that they were raising. When they came back after the hurricane there was only one left. As you enter you are greeted with a number of signs. Please watch your children with a picture of a gator with a child in its mouth. Caution do not extend arms over the railings, Warning Alligators can jump for food, please keep your hands off the fence and railings. Kind of scary.

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We saw the baby gators first. They only grow a foot a year so these are about a year or so old. Then we saw the big guys enjoying the sun.

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We were the only ones there for this ride, so we got a private tour. Cliff our guide grew up here. He has been wrestling gators since he was 13. He is now one of the famous gator boys from the show on TV. The boys capture unwanted alligators from waters around the area, like from peoples backyards. They also wrestle them. He has also been in some documentaries. Sounds like he has a pretty busy filming schedule. We learned a lot about alligators and the swamp from him.

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Here we are on the air boat. We had to wear the yellow ear protection when the boat was running, it is pretty loud but it moves very fast. Cliff was a pretty acrobatic driver too. It was a beautiful sunny day, about 70 degrees.  And yes we did visit Boudreaux the Zombie Gater. He like all the rest was just laying around. Gators don’t do much but lay around.

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We took advantage of the really cheap diesel in Mississippi before we headed over the border into Alabama. We visited our friend Barbara Cash in Grand Bay. We met her and her husband Terry on the Blue Ridge Parkway in their motor home. They have long leaf pines growing in their yard-needles about 15 inches long and they sent me a huge box of them when I started making pine needle baskets. We visited them last time we were in Alabama and restocked my needle supply. This trip we found out that Terry had just passed away after an extended battle with cancer. Very sad, but Barb seem to be doing well. It was nice to visit with her and we collected a few more needles. Dauphin Island is also in the area so we visited there. It was late in the after noon. When we arrived at the Historic Fort Gaines it was closing so we didn’t get to tour it.

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Most of Dauphin Island is a bird sanctuary maintained by the Audubon Society.  It is a barrier island off the coast. We walked on the beach for sunset. It has lovely white sand, sea oats , long leaf pines and lots of shore birds.

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There was a prescribed burn in the sandhill crane refuge that we visited last week so there was lots of smoke in the air. It made sunset very colorful. Natural gas has been discovered in Mobile bay area so now there are a bunch of oil wells off the coast.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

January 25, 2015 Parker Lake, Mississippi

Parker Lake is sort of one of the tributaries of the Pascagoula river. The water runs into the river, but the lake is a forest of cypress trees. It is kind of like wandering around in a in the forest, but in a boat. It is high water now, the water is about 6 feet deeper than other times of the year.

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We started out downstream. But it had pretty strong current  and we didn’t want to  paddle back against it. Me posing in the boat when we turned around.

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So we turned around and headed up current into the forest. Cypress trees are coniferous trees. Their needles turn orange in the fall and then drop off. We boated through naked cypress.

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It is a thick forest. Some of the trees are really big. Most of the first growth cypress which can grow up to 100 feet tall and 15 feet in diameter were cut down for lumber in the old days. These big trees must have been too small to cut back then. They grow really slow.  It all kind of looks the same. We thought we were going straight up and then straight back, but we ended up lost. We had to ask directions from the one guy who went by. It ended up we had gone in a 3 and half mile circle and were almost back. John had his GPS, but forgot his glasses so he couldn’t read it.

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John looking at kissing trees. The trees in spots were mossy with some fall color trees behind them.

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John is paddling toward me in these two photos. The first on he is a tiny blue dot in the middle, the second he is closer. This is a huge place.

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Sue with a big old knarled  tree and a curved one.

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I think this is primarily a hunting/ fishing spot. There were lots of lures stuck high up in the trees. We met a gentleman putting in when we were. He was rabbit hunting. He had his dogs with him, I guess he lets them out on the solid land islands and they chase the rabbits to him. It is rabbit season now. He said people catch really big crappie in this area and he told us stories about hog hunting here. He was the guy who gave us directions back when we were lots. He didn’t get any rabbits today.

This gas station has big fat juicy cheeseburgers, hot food, cold beer and a pretty cashier.