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Showing posts from June, 2014

Branson by the Ocean a.k.a. Gulf Shores Alabama

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So today reality sets in and its back to the daily grind.  I still haven't told you about our last day at Gulf Shores, Alabama so here goes. We left St. George Island around 11:00 a.m. on Thursday.  Next stop, Orange Beach and Gulf Shores Alabama. We drove along the coast most of the way.  Lots of swamp logging going on in this area and somewhat unfortunate to see so many closed businesses and abandoned buildings scattered along the coast line. It was a different story when we got into Orange Beach/Gulf Shores.  I compare it to a place we have in the southern part of Missouri called Branson.  Lots of people, lots of cars, and a bunch of tourist type attractions.  So to me Gulf Shores was Branson by the Ocean. It has a higher density of people and high rise accommodations than my heart desires but we have never been here and now we know.      The slogan for Gulf shores is "Small Town, Big Beach"  The beach was wide and where we stopped there was probably 3-

St George Island "The Uncommon Florida"

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On Thursday morning our plan was to spend a few hours at the State Park on St. George Island.  The park was on the east end of the island.  The terrain and vegetation is much different here compared to our island paradise of Sanibel/Captiva. We had high hopes of finding some different shells.  We briefly scouted the area out on Wednesday afternoon and saw many different color variations of bivalves that we are not use to seeing on Captiva.  We also found several shark eyes on Wednesday but many were too broken up to keep. The park opens at 8:00 a.m. The cost to enter the park is $6.  There is about an 8 mile stretch of beach with several access and parking areas along the way.  There are two large parking areas with shelters and restroom along the beach in the park and several smaller parking with access to beach along the 8 mile stretch of the park.  The restroom and shelter areas were well maintained.  There are a lot of dunes in the park so the landscape is very different fr

St George Island FL

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We arrived in St. George Island FL this afternoon.  Compared to Sanibel/Captiva this place is like a different planet.  The island does not have nearly as much vegetation on it as Sanibel.  There are also a lot of dunes.  We had dinner on the beach at the Blue Parrot.   After dinner we explored the state park on St. George.  Kind of a scouting trip because our plans are to go back there in the morning and spend part of the day before moving on to Gulf Shores AL. The shells we saw on the beach this evening were different colors so this should be interesting tomorrow.  I hope to post more tomorrow. Here are a few random photos from today.

There's a thief on Captiva

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Our time with paradise is almost over, but the journey continues.  We will be leaving on Tuesday morning.  We got a call from the condo owner on Sunday morning.  We had rented the condo for 9 days.  She was going to come down and spend some time after we left on Tuesday but her schedule would not allow it.  She called to let us know we were welcome to stay till Friday if we wanted.  How nice is that?  I would have jumped on the opportunity but we have made plans to travel about 4 hours north to Fruitland Park FL to visit some old friend we have not seen in ages. We are then going to take a slower route home and stop along the way to bathe in the ocean breeze a few more times before heading back to Missouri.  We have a stop planned at St. George Island FL and Gulf shores AL.  We have not traveled through the pan handle of Florida before so we our planning routes along the coast.  New highways down our road of life. This has truly been a great week!  The weather was great.  The ocean

Flip Flops or Thongs

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So Friday after some shopping we stopped at the Beach Angels favorite restaurant on Sanibel,Cheeburger, Cheeburger.  I don't know why it is but every time I leave that place I feel like I just shot an episode of Man vs. Food and no my picture is not on the wall nor do I ever intend to get it put there. MY fries were loaded and my belly was bloated So were back to Captiva and time for the beach.  Turns out Superman and Tweety bird were there also.  They did try the boogie board out again today but only for a short time.  I think the workout the day before had them going at a slower pace today. Superman would hold onto Tweety Bird's ankles (now close your eyes and visualize this)  when the wave was just right he would push her off and she was riding the wave like a pro.  We ended up meeting them and spent hours on the beach just chatting about Captiva and beaches.  They were a really nice couple vacationing here from Mobile Alabama.  So in case you wanted to know where