Lessons In Crustaceans 3/20/18

Meaher State Park, Spanish Fort, Alabama

Well, one good thing about being so far behind is that I forget all the little quirks and anecdotes I was originally going to share. Sometimes, pictures help refresh my memory, but I think I’m on information overload by now. And since I didn’t make notes for this day, I’m mostly at a loss.

I can tell you that we enjoyed our day walking around Mobile. I can tell you it’s a lovely town. I can tell you we walked quite a bit. I can tell you we saw some nice and some interesting things. I can tell you a Carnival Cruise Ship was in town.

Look at that water slide!
This picture was taken as we were driving into town.

And I can tell you that when the first day of Spring falls on Wednesday, it’s really hard to find parking!

We finally managed to park and it happened to be near the Visitor Center. It was supposed to be 2-hour parking, but we opted not to worry about it, hoping that since Mardi Gras is over, they don’t care anymore. Guess we were right. 😊

Downtown Mobile

There’s the buildings you’ve been seeing in the background of some of our pictures.
The large white building houses the Visitor Center and their history museum, among other things.

The tall one is a hotel, the other one is an office building.

Visitor Center et al

They have a Mardi Gras Park with commemorative statues scattered around.

Blaine managed to get a picture with the sun behind his scepter.
Looks great!!!

She still has a lot of beads on her left from Mardi Gras.

There was no sign for this one, so I’m gonna say it just represents the Jazz music of Mardi Gras.

Joe Cain aka Chief Slackabamamarinico.
No sign for him either.
Strange.

View of the First Baptist Church from the Park.
We’ll have more on this later.

After touring the Park, we set out to walk around town.

How ’bout that!
A mermaid skeleton!

I don’t know why I don’t have a picture of the building . . .

The Saenger Theatre
It was closed, so we couldn’t compare the inside with the Civic Theatre in downtown Akron, Ohio.

This cafe had tables outside with fans positioned to blow over them.

Great Easter window!

A Catholic Cathedral

It was pretty impressive in person!
There’s lots and lots of gold here – inside and out!

The entrance

WOW!!

As you can see, there were people in here praying.
We didn’t want to disturb them, so we didn’t go up front to take pictures.

Something a little different than we’ve seen before . . .

By comparison, here’s a Baptist Church:

A bit more subdued. Might have something to do with the date it was built and the financial resources of the Baptists vs Catholics at the time. : )

Still decorated for Mardi Gras

Many of the trees around here are dripping with throws!

It’s difficult to capture a good picture, but if you look closely, you’ll see a hula-hoop amongts the beads.

This tour starts with a driving tour around town, then drives right into the Bay and continues with a boat tour!
We didn’t purchase it, but it seemed like it would be fun! Different at any rate!

We discovered a cemetery! Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us in. Padlocked. : (

Still have to take pictures – from wherever possible.

We returned to the Visitor Center to ask if there was anyplace to walk along the water and were told, “No.” But during a brief conversation with her, she also told us that she wasn’t an American citizen. That may have had something to do with her naiveté. We found the water, then we found a walkway. 😊

And we found the Carnival ship getting ready to leave. Believe it or not, it had to back out of the channel and into the Bay! It took a long time.

An actual full-size train runs through here!

Dinner was peel-and-eat shrimp and salad. We bought the shrimp on the recommendation of the woman at the grocery store counter. They’re from the Alabama area of the Gulf of Mexico. We paid a little more for them than the other shrimp they had, but still, at $7/pound a good price.

At least that’s what we thought. They came intact. As in. Entire whole shrimp. Once we broke the heads off, at least half of it was thrown in the trash. So now make that $14/pound! Not so good. At least the shrimp were good. But no better than any other shrimp.