A Busy Day Today

We had a busy day today. After showering this morning, we decided to go out for breakfast. I had looked on Urban Spoon and found another hole-in-the-wall place that had great ratings. We were going to Costco today, so planned on being out and about even though the Heavenly Biscuit was a long ways away in Fort Myer Beach.

As we headed out of Sun Seeker RV Park, we saw this critter resting on a rock near the drainage ditch outside the park fence --

We've not ever seen a turtle so stretched out. I think he was trying to get every bit of warmth he could underneath that muddy coat of algae he was sporting. I wonder what kind of turtle it is?

The little bit of sun we had this morning rapidly disappeared as we headed north. It didn't just rain, it poured! Large fat raindrops that pinged off of Toad's windshield.

When we finally go to Heavenly Biscuit, it was closed! When I went to the door, the lady said that their power had gone out with the thunderstorm, shutting down the grills, so she had sent the staff home...

I think she really felt bad about it. She gave us two of the cinnamon rolls the internet said they were famous for and refused to take any payment for them. (We warmed them in the microwave tonight after dinner and they were delicious!)

Then try to find some place else to eat, hopefully with some atmosphere. But, no such luck. We ended up eating at a Red Robin near Costco (probably should have just gone over to Costco for a hot dog...). Forry had a guacamole bacon burger while I settle for some pretty mediocre mac and cheese.

We made our Costco run, then stopped at a Publix grocery for OJ and milk. We got home to a rather wet RV park just in time for another pretty hard rain shower. The Weather channel is forecasting showers and thunderstorms over the next several days, so I guess we'd better get used to it.

Fort Morgan, Alabama

Fort Morgan sits on the westernmost tip of the peninsula that encloses the bottom portion of Mobile Bay in Alabama. Mobile Bay is on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. The fort was completed following the War of 1812 when Congress realized how vulnerable the US coastlines were. This building was built to house the Fort Morgan Museum after the fort was deactivated and turned over to the State of Alabama.

The brick fortifications were mostly destroyed during the Civil War by rifled cannon and steam-powered warships. This was pretty much proven in 1864 when Admiral D.G. Farragut led his fleet past the guns of the fort into Mobile Bay with the loss of only one ship. (This was when he gave his famous order, "Damn the torpedoes (mines), full speed ahead!") That ship, the ironclad Tecumseh, was struck by a exploding mine (then called torpedoes) and sunk within a minute thus disproving the view that the ironclads were invincible...

Concrete batteries were built following the Civil War from 1896 to 1905. These batteries were manned during the Spanish-American War and World War I.

Some of the powder magazines below the gun batteries still exist --

 Fort Morgan was mainly used as a training base during the World War I. It was deactivated and put into caretaker status in 1923; then reactivated and manned in 1941. In 1946 it was again deactivated and turned over to the State of Alabama.
 

Looking out over Mobile Bay from the top of one of the batteries --

There are a lot of what we assumed were oil platforms and other rigs in the Bay --

The last time we drove along the Gulf Coast a year or so after Katrina, there wasn't much left of any of the beach houses except for some of the pillars they had been built on. The trees that were left were mostly broken and bare. Some of the shoreline still looks that way --

.

But most of it is once again built up with beach houses that look like pastel confections --

 

I think that there must be a rule that says your vacation home must be painted a color that looks edible!

A VERY, VERY, Rainy Day

It rained hard during the night; then this morning, it POURED! And then it poured some more! We had planned to head down to the western most portion of Alabama on Mobile Bay today to Fort Morgan, but it was way too wet outside!

About three-thirty or so the rain slacked off so we were able to go for a short walk around the RV park. There are probably thirty or so of these little rental cabins scattered around the park. Most of them seemed to be occupied this holiday weekend.

I've seen lots of these pyracantha bushes around the property --

I love the red berries!

It was so wet and nasty out today, even the vultures weren't flying..

As we walked back towards Auntie Violet, the clouds lightened up  and we could see some blue sky

through the trees. The remaining clouds were turned golden by the setting sun --

Unfortunately, the break in the clouds did not last and tonight it is again intermittently raining hard. The weather channel shows the storm heading northeast and out to sea. It can hurry up and do it as far as I am concerned!