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 --

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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!

Checking out the Area

Styx River RV Resort is an older, pretty large RV park. It looks like there are around 250 spaces along with several park models and cabins. As you can see, the lots aren't real big and the ground surface is mostly dirt --

It was nice enough yesterday that Auntie Violet put her awning out (the wind was gusty this morning, so she put it back in before we left...).

We took a drive this afternoon to find a grocery store and the check out the country a bit. We ran into this field --

of cotton that hadn't been picked yet. This is the first time we've seen an unharvested field. We saw several other fields that had been picked and had big stacks of pressed cotton covered with tarps along their edges.

The soil here is very red. We saw a bunch of guys around this area of red dirt and stopped to see what was going on. Turns out they were racing little radio-controlled cars around this very hilly track. Forry tried to get a picture of the cars, but they were going so fast he couldn't get one! Note that there were NO children racing these little cars -- they were all grown men!

We did find a nice Winn-Dixie store in Fairhope and picked up some blueberries and orange juice. From there we drove over towards Mobile Bay. We got occasional glimpses of the water, but most of the shoreline is occupied by big houses with large fenced off yards in front of them. It was starting to get dark, so we headed back towards the River Styx with a stop at Ruby Tuesday for a seafood supper.