Dauphin Island/Fort Morgan

We left Biloxi and made our way down to Dauphin Island and then took the ferry to Fort Morgan.

I should have said earlier that we were very worried about the lasting effects of the oil rig disaster on the area. It turns out that this part of the Gulf shore never was touched by it for currents and prevailing winds and other helpful factors.

On the ferry we talked for quite a while with two women, Noreen and Rita (maybe I'll remember), for quite a while. They'd been walking around the eastern point of Dauphin Island and were returning to their car in Fort Morgan. Noreen was in a wheelchair, but not restricted to it. She is tiny and fragile looking. At 92 she usually plays seven holes of golf everyday ... but sometimes less. There's a little inspiration for me, eh? Her friend was a generation younger, but probably older than me.

Mike and I had been thinking about renting a house on Dauphin Island sometime in the future. It's nice, but too quiet, even for us.

We both had po boys there (basically a hero sandwich). Mike had the catch of the day and I had shrimp. As always down here, it was just too much to eat. Mine must have had 30 good sized shrimp on it. The wide, thick, toasted roll it came on was too much, also. I ate one small bite on one slice, half the other, and the shrimp, along with some of the cold slaw. Most of the meals we've sat down to could have been half as big and still be plenty.

Here's some pictures from that leg of our journey (Tuesday, Sept. 20).

There were a couple dozen oil and natural gas rigs within sight in this little section of the Gulf. We passed pretty close to this one on our small ferry (capacity about 18 cars -- roughly a third of the Lake Champlain ferries and a twentieth of the Seattle ferries we saw and traveled on).

Part of the six mile long causeway leading to Dauphin Island.

This is now how you have to build homes in hurricane alley. Some much, much larger homes are built with the same base. A vast majority of the houses are pastel shades. This one was one of the brighter ones. Some of the houses are seemingly a long way from the coast, but still high on stilts.

With yet another change in plans, this time due to drifting sand across a road we hoped to travel, we ended up in Pensacola. The sand was about a foot deep in places ... potentially trapping us in all directions. We'd had enough of that around Lancaster PA. Still, how often is someone cut off by water and sand on the same trip?