"When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses." - Joyce Brothers
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Dauphin Island and Bay Palms "Resort"
Being by the water is what we love - whether on it, in it, or sitting beside it. We did the latter quite a bit on Dauphin Island recently. Biking the length of the island didn't provide us much of a water view since the beach houses occupy the entire beach area all the way to the end.
Here's a 28 second video of the laughing galls and pelicans on Dauphin Island near the ferry dock. We enjoyed watching the birds along this area on a few days while visiting the island.
The ferry ride was very enjoyable. We brought our bikes over to the island from Ft. Morgan while camping at Gulf State Park.
Public beach on Dauphin Island
Typical house up on stilts on the island - at least they have a boat to get in when the water rises!
We walked around the bird sanctuary, but didn't see any birds - only alligators! I guess the big birding season is April when birds migrate through there.
In search of birds in the Audubon Bird Sanctuary
I'd rather see birds!
Our finds in Audubon Sanctuary
Another live oak monster! What fun it would be for climbing for Claire and Easton.
Inside historic Ft. Gaines on the island
We found Anne's boat!
She's a beauty!
Our campground just across the bridge from the island - was a huge RV city (137 sites, rowhouse style!)
It had a nice pool (but only made it up to 70, too cold for me to swim) and basketball court, and a small "gym" with equipment.
It also came with WILD weather Fri. morning and all this flood water between the RV's!
Here's a short video taken during the storm.
If we were to go back, we would check availability at this nice little RV Park on the island, just over the bridge. We didn't like the cancellation policy of the city campground by the ferry dock.
These sunset pictures were taken from Tradewinds RV Resort's beach.
I loved our visit to Bellingrath Gardens and Home on our recent trip to Alabama. It was just 8 miles from where we camped across from Dauphin Island at Bay Palms RV Resort. Here's a link to a 4-min. video that shows it all!
The Meaher State Park video is about 2.5 minutes. It includes clips from the grounds of the historic and beautiful Grand Hotel that a friend told us to be sure to visit near Fairhope, and biking the Eastern Shore Trail along the east shore of Mobile Bay. We wouldn't recommend the trail - unless you like biking along busy city roads on a rough sidewalk. We did enjoy seeing several beautiful homes along Mobile Bay and the park and pier in Fairhope, a lovely little town.
Here's the YouTube link to a two-minute video of our recent visit to Gulf Shores, Alabama's enormous Gulf State Park. It's hard to get a reservation there, so we managed to only get a 3-day stay. Then we booked another week for after our visit to Meaher SP and Dauphin Island. It would require our moving between four different campsites in seven days. We didn't like the park well enough to return for that circus, so we cancelled that week. Make your own opinion when you watch, or visit the park sometime. But book WAY ahead of your hopeful visit. Five months wasn't enough! And be prepared to pay a 15% resort fee, and total of 13% in various taxes on top of the daily camping fee of about $40, depending on what day of the week and what kind of campsite. They have a lot of "premium" sites (on alligator infested lakes and canals!) that you get charged extra for.
It's a LONG walk from the campground to the beach - took us 15 minutes once we figured out how to get there! Boardwalks are everywhere, with alligators lurking below them we learned on our first bike ride.
This bridge to the Gulf beach crosses the four-lane road.
Mirror-like water after the day of rain
The campground does have a good amount of distance between sites. They lost half of their trees in a hurricane so it's still coming back and being cleaned up.
