Back in Mobile!

We spent 4 days at Chickasabogue Park, a Mobile County park in Alabama.  This was another wonderful county park - full hookups, a completely private wooded pull-thru site, and a huge park with lots of trails.  As a bonus it was pretty convenient to the interstate!  The only downside is that we barely saw any wildlife - the songbirds normally so prevalent were nowhere to be seen, no squirrels...I did see one raccoon late at night, but that was just about it - very odd.

Chickasabogue Park Campsite

First time camping in Alabama means a new 
sticker on the map!

I worked in Mobile for 3 months in 2010, right after we returned from England, on the MC252 Deepwater Horizon oil spill response.  I really enjoyed my time there, and our first day in the area we drove down into Mobile to check out all of our old haunts from that time.  As when we were here before, we felt that the capacity of the area (number of buildings, size of roads) was much larger than the actual number of people living and working there.  Last time we were here, a lot of people talked about depressed industry due to the oil spill...this time, maybe COVID was keeping everyone home?  I'm inclined to think though that it's just a much smaller population than it used to be.  We still had fun tooling around town.  We stopped in at the Charles Wood Japanese Garden, which we think has seen better days but had several turtles and beautiful koi fish.  Then we crossed the street to the absolutely massive Langan Park, where we saw the most curious dinosaur artwork and a random unlabeled fighter jet.  We stopped at the highly rated Cammie's Old Dutch Ice Cream Shoppe for a banana split.  Perhaps the most unique thing we did was stop by the Visitation Monastery gift shop to buy some Heavenly Hash made by the nuns there - delicious!

Koi and turtles at the Japanese Garden...sadly the water was
very green

This and the next were 2-D painted wooden cutouts on an island
in Langan Park

I'm not sure how well it comes across, but they looked very
realistic in person

There was no sign on this plane and I couldn't find anything
online to explain its presence in Langan Park

Banana Split at Cammie's Old Dutch Ice Cream Shoppe!

With our box of Heavenly Hash outside the Visitation Gift Shop

We tooled around the park and did some more accidental mountain biking on trails the park ranger promised me were wide and flat...not so much!

The only picture we got was on a 
deceptively flat part of the trail - most 
of it didn't look this nice!

Our final day in the area we drove down to Dauphin Island and toured Fort Gaines, the site of the Battle of Mobile Bay in the Civil War.  The fort was well preserved and the island was beautiful.

The entrance to the fort

Latrines inside the fort

Sitting atop a magazine with a view of the fort interior

With a cannon overlooking the bay

Now, onward to Florida!