Saturday, April 18, 2009

vacation chronicles, day four: mobile

Monday, April 13

We wake up, eat breakfast, and grab a whole bunch of brochures. We drive around looking for the Spanish Fort. There was no brochure for it, but we keep passing signs that say Spanish Fort. Eventually, we figure out that Spanish Fort is the name of a town, and as far as we can tell, it is no longer the location of an actual Spanish Fort. So we shuffle through our brochures and head for Bellingrath Gardens.







Dauphin Island is not far from Bellingrath, so we head that way, crossing the looooong bridge that has roller coaster -like uphills and downhills. We find Fort Gaines and roam the grounds, pausing at the blacksmith's room for some present-day action.







Done with the Fort, we head toward the water.





Then we call my younger brother, who lives in Mobile, and he meets us for a yummy seafood dinner, followed by a tour of his home and some ice cream.

In between all of this, there are a couple of calls to the car repair shop down in Foley. By the time the day is done, the car is fixed and we arrange to pick it up the next day. I try to offset the cost and hassle by noting that at least it didn't break down during a regular work week, thus disrupting Lee's schedule. My spin on this does not gain much traction, but all in all we have had a really nice day. A really vacation day.

10 comments:

Julia said...

I'm glad that at least the end of the vacation wound up being relaxing. Sorry to hear about the car, not fun at all especially when far from home.

countrypeapie said...

The whole experience was definitely a mixed bag, but this particular day was really quite nice. (Question: If you follow my blog, do you get a jillion updates in a row when I decide to be neurotic about ordering my pictures only after I publish the post instead of during the draft phase? Because there are still a couple in this post that need to be rearranged, but I'm really trying to just get over it!)

Lythrum said...

I'm glad that you had a good day in the trip too. Sounds too eventful to me. :)

Lythrum said...

P.S. You're not alone, I spend a lot of time fussing over the order of my pictures too.

countrypeapie said...

Hi Lythrum ~ You know, normally a day packed with that much stuff would be entirely too much for us, too, but for some reason it never felt that way. I think perhaps because we didn't have an agenda -- we just took off and didn't hurry -- just sort of went from one thing to the next in a very natural way.

There are two pictures in particular that I'd like to re-order. It's driving me crazy but I also really don't want to go to the trouble!

Julia said...

I didn't notice the updates on the RSS feed, so I say organize away!

The Country Experience said...

I still haven't signed up for RSS feed yet. I'm on the old-fashioned method of surfing sites for updates. Maybe I should catch up with the times.

I'm glad you finally had a relaxing, vacation-like day.

countrypeapie said...

Thanks TCE! (I still mostly surf, too.)

Heather Klusendorf Stewart said...

Thanks for taking me on vacation with you! I needed to get away! Awesome. Great photos. I was so there.

countrypeapie said...

Thanks Heather!