Happy Anniversary to Us and Seattle Weather on the Gulf Coast

After driving over 8000 miles to enjoy sunshine and balmy temps, Seattle’s winter weather has finally tracked us down. In fact, it is actually a few degrees colder here! Brrrrrrrrrr.  We’ve had high winds and plenty of rain, but the temps and precipitation aren’t lining up to give me snow. Sigh. That would have been something! Anyway you look at it, I think we can safely dismiss any thoughts of kayaking or snorkeling for now. Lol.

Bundled up for our walkies.

We caught just the very edge of a huge storm that blew through the Gulf Coast a bit north of Saint Andrews on Monday. We had an awesome lightning show and some rain, but it cleared up for our departure. We left Florida for Gulf Shores State Park in Alabama on Tuesday, 1/3, which also happened to be our 36^th wedding anniversary. Obviously, Rog has some long-term masochistic tendencies and considering he’s spent the last five months in a 33 ft. box with me… well he’s either certifiable or should be canonized (or both!). Lol.

We had a nice dinner out at Cosmos in Orange Beach to celebrate with excellent peanut butter pie for dessert. Now that all the holidays are over, I’ve run out of excuses to indulge. Speaking of masochistic tendencies, my sister-in-law, Kim, challenged a group of us on Fitbit to try for 10K steps a day and my brother, Tim, and I are also abusing each other with a 10K step challenge on Stridekick. My competitive streak is alive and well. Lol.  Rog and I have also started to track our calories again, time to starting weighing (us), measuring (our food) and logging (both) again. No fun, but extremely effective. Another sigh. :)

Luckily, there are beautiful beaches, and a really nice set of nature trails and paved paths all accessible from the campground.  Unfortunately, other than the beach, the area just isn’t that picturesque. It’s pretty bad when we walked for over two hours without taking a single picture. No mountain views, towering trees or rocky vistas here. Lol!

Gulf Shores beach at sunset.

Beach pavilion.

Having way too much fun hunting for sea shells.

So far we’ve done pretty well on our steps (did I mention my competitive streak? Lol). We walked before breakfast one day to beat the rain. Then on Thursday we did 25 miles on the paved bike trails here in the park. It was brisk but sunny and not too windy. Perfect riding weather. There were benches all along the trail, mostly "in loving memory of...". It started to feel like riding through a graveyard, so we really got a kick out of those with a different twist. Talk about unfair though, biking doesn't give us any credit for steps so we still had to hoof it around the park. We ended up on the beach at sunset and then had to feel our way home in the dark. Lol. 

Love the paved trail and it's FLAT!

Beautiful cardinal - we don't see these at home.

Azaleas blooming in January.

Loved the sentiment! Here's a couple with a sense of humor.

'Bama gator sighting!

Apparently the heron thinks his name is "Dumpster". :)

Shafts of light through the clouds.

At 1,540 feet long, Gulf Shores State Park has the second longest pier on the Gulf of Mexico. 

Dunes in the fading light.

On Friday, 1/6, the storms returned and brought buckets of rain and plummeting temps. We spent some time browsing a book store, picked up a small electric heater so our furnace doesn’t need to run as much, and hung out at Starbucks. My computer is behaving very badly, so I spent a couple hours trying to troubleshoot that with my brother Tim’s help. No love yet, but I have a few more things to try before I hand it over to the professionals. As night fell, so did the temperatures. We’re talking low 20’s and a frozen water hose cold on the Gulf coast. Really?

What we hadn’t realized was that we’d parked our RV under Hogwarts Whomping Willow tree. We woke in the night to the sound of howling winds and a loud creaking and scraping as the huge Southern Live Oak above us tried to claw its way through our roof. At 3AM Rog finally got dressed, crawled up onto the roof of the RV and used a pair of hand pruners to trim the branches. A little creative horticulture in the dead of night. Lol.

Parked beneath the Whomping Willow (which got a late night haircut!). Lol.

Our game plan for the next few days is to get our walkies in and then hunker down next to the space heater. I'll work some more on beating my Surface Book and Microsoft Windows into submission (don't lay any bets on that!). It should gradually get warmer and may even get close to 70˚by Tuesday, 1/10, the day we’re scheduled to leave. But, as Rog reminds me, we don’t have to leave if we don’t want to! We have no reservations for our next stop, so we are totally in discretionary time. That feels soooooooooo weird. Lol.