December 16, 2023 – Traveling with Rich & Julie
The first thing I did this morning was open the window blinds to let the pretty sunshine in.
The second thing I did was spend a couple of hours on Medium reading and writing.
Then I decided I better get some Christmas cards written and mailed. It is the 15th of the month already. Who knows how slow the snail mail delivery will be? If I get the cards in the mail today, the USPS has 10 days to get them to my family.
I was a little sticker-shocked when I asked for four postage stamps and she said $2.66! Excuse me?! I had a half a roll of forever stamps when we moved into the RV and it has taken me two years to use them all. I didn’t realize how expensive they were now.
After the post office, we put gas in the car at $2.49. I remember paying over $6 a gallon when we were in the state of Washington in May of 2022.
With a full tank of gas, we headed south toward Gulf Shores and turned west on Fort Morgan Road.
We stopped at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge and walked out on the beach. As the surrounding area becomes increasingly developed, Bon Secour is a natural oasis of wildlands, where wildlife can exist without harm.
The dune areas are off-limits and protected. This is the place to come early in the morning for large seashells. We found some pretty good-sized broken ones.
I also found some large mushrooms along the path and of course, had to take pictures of them.
And then I saw another amazing large oak tree that I just had to get a photo of.
We drove on down to the end of the road at Fort Morgan. Fort Morgan is a State Historical Site so our National Park Pass didn’t work for entrance.
The entrance fee is $8 per adult. We opted out for now and just took photos of what we could see from the road.
This is also the location of the Dauphin Island Ferry that goes back and forth from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island.
We didn’t take the ferry today. Hopefully another day but it’s a little pricey.
We parked and walked out on the fishing pier. There was a man out there fishing who said he was from Scotland.
Another interesting site that I had to get a picture of was the oil rig just off the coast. I’m not sure if these are oil rigs or natural gas but there were several of them.
The only battery we could see without entering the fort was the Battery Dearborn on the road as we drove past. It was built in 1900 and completed in 1901. It was named after Henry Dearborn who was a distinguished soldier of the Revolutionary War.
We came home, had homemade chili soup for supper, and cleaned our seashell haul of the day.
Then we spent the evening watching Christmas movies on television.
It was another great day living in an RV that is currently parked in Foley, Alabama. Thanks for following along on our journeys.