It is a Passport America park and for $17.50 a night with full hookups, it worked just fine. Passport America is a club you can join and stay at these parks for half price. Many have restrictions and limitations so you have to read the fine print when you book them. But for us they work fine and we only use it when we are traveling from one point to the other. We don't like to Wallydock at all, but that is just us.
The next day we drove to Buccaneer State Park in Waveland, Mississippi. This is the third time we have been to this area and we really like it. It was hit hard by hurricane Katrina and is slowly recovering from that after many years. The beaches are beautiful and empty. Although it is January and the temps where in the mid to upper 60's. Fine for us because we just left the negative 20's. Our plan was to enjoy the sun at the beach for the day and then eat at Shaggy's, a beach bar in Pass Christian. I brought my metal detector so that I could strike it rich.
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| Gulf of Mexico |
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| Waveland Mississippi |
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| Sunset |
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| Lisa happy |
Lisa enjoyed the sun on the beach and I went right to work to strike it rich. With no traffic on the beach, I could set up a classic grid pattern and combed a large area of sand.
Our next stop brought us to Daphne, Alabama at Meaher State park. It was a nice park on the bay. Our site backed up to the water for a great view.
The sites are large and spread out. It looks perfect and I know for many people it would be. Here is the but, that black line on the horizon is I-10. The noise from the highway carries across the water and can be noisy if you are not used to it. We lived on the interstate (I-94) and are used to the noise. We chose this area for 2 reasons. One is that the USS Alabama is right there and the second is, we have friends at Gulf Shores we wanted to visit with.
We have traveled on I-10 for years now and have never stopped to see that battleship. Everytime we would drive buy I would say "someday we are stopping." So we finally did. So here are some photos of the Uss Alabama.
I was right at home blasting imaginary "Zekes" out of the sky. Now if only Lisa would let me add one of those 20mm machine guns to my little collection. Lisa said that it looked like so much fun that she wanted to try.
To out do me though, she chose the 40mm anti-aircraft guns. "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!" is all I could hear her yell. Then out of the blue I hear "SPLASH ONE M****RF****R!" Damn, I need to keep her away from guns. I quickly ushered her inside and away from the guns.
What a very cool piece of history and if you are passing by this way, take a few hours to learn what our sailors endured. With the cost of the battleship tour, you also get to tour a WWII submarine. The USS Drum. There is no way that I could have lived and worked on a sub. I thought maybe the battleship with it's crew of nearly 2500 men but the sub is tiny.
After that we went to Gulf Shores where our friends Bob and Deb are wintering. We got caught up with what's been going on the last couple of years since we had seen them last. Lots of stories and laughs. We met them at our first tour of Amazon and have stayed in touch. That's what I like about this lifestyle. The people we meet. We then went to dinner at Lambert's so that they could throw some rolls at us. I completely forgot to take a photo of us. But if I had it would have looked something like this.
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| Bob, Deb, Lisa and I. |
I am always bad about taking group photos. We said our goodbyes and then headed to the Tampa Fairgrounds.
Next up is the Tampa RV Supershow.
Welcome to the south! I could not imagine living on a battleship let alone a submarine. A little too tight for me!
ReplyDeleteI could not do it either. We hope to run into you guys somewhere but I can't make any promises. So have the tacos on standby.
DeleteWe loved that ship. Great food in that area too. Get 'em Lisa!
ReplyDeleteIt was a very interesting piece of history. I wish we would have had more time.
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