Mardi Gras and Dauphin Island
When we woke up Saturday morning, we had a vague afternoon plan to visit Dauphin Island – just off the southern coast near Mobile. We didn’t know what we were going to do this morning though. After running through a few ideas, we settled on visiting the Mardi Gras Museum in downtown Mobile. As we often do on vacation, we dined on the breakfast provided by the hotel. Unfortunately, a few baseball teams that were playing in a tournament nearby had already used up the life of the waffle machine – so we had whatever looked good. Not much of it looked good though. It was a breakfast of cereal, fruit, or toast.
Carnival Museum
Travelling down Airport Boulevard, we got to see quite a few sights once we made it to the historic district. You could tell we were there as there was a Civil War era cannon pointing in the direction we were driving. Then the old southern style houses started appearing to the sides. One hundred-year-old mansions lined the sides of the street until we were in the downtown area. Before we knew it, the museum was on our right.
The museum itself was built into a combination of one of these old houses and another building that acted more as a meeting space/gift shop. Two jesters (more on these guys later) stood on the porch to each side of the mansion’s original door, but we found the entrance was on the parking lot side of the building. Doubloons had been embedded into the walk as decorations. We learned that these aren’t pirate money, but aluminum stamped coins that were thrown from the parade floats.
Laissez les Bons Temps Roulier!
Upon entering the museum, we found that a tour was just starting that we could join them before they really got started. I missed a bit of what the tour guide said at the beginning, but I quickly caught up and really enjoyed his tour. I do tend to wander a bit in museums, as I see something I really want to learn more about and start reading the plaques at the exhibits.
One of the first things you learn on the guided tour is Mardi Gras in the US began in Mobile. New Orleans later adopted it, but I bet their museum says they started it and Mobile adopted it later. The “Jester” is actually a Folly – drawing from ancient literature as a personification of foolishness. The parades and balls are put on by mystic societies that were once secret societies that you had to be invited to join but now are open for a donation.
We continued through the museum, listening to our guide, and genuinely enjoying the exhibits. After the tour, our guide suggested to our group to purchase his book and he would sign it. This surprised me. It isn’t often that you get a tour guide who is expert enough to have published their own book. So, we bought the book and he signed it for us. Should you ever decide to go through the museum, get on a tour led by L. Craig Roberts. After the tour Stacy told us he was the best tour guide at the museum.
Stella and Luna
We returned to the hotel to grab some PB&Js for lunch and waited for Stacy’s call to let us know she was off work. When she called, we drove to meet her at her house where we met her 4 dogs – Luna, Stella … and we can’t remember the other two. Luna (an English mastiff – Hooch from Turner and Hooch) was one of the sweetest dogs you would ever meet. … And because Stella (part pit-bull) was super excited to meet us. After taking a nasty looking scratch from Stella, I sat down on the floor and pet and play with Stella. The scratch wasn’t really that bad, but it stung for a few seconds. She just needed to say hi to me and I needed to let her do that.
We set off on the quick 30-minute trip for Dauphin Island, but I felt like Stacy was leading us to her secret body-dump location. To be fair, the roads in Alabama all seem to be lined with thick woods that constantly gave me the feeling of being in a remote location. The road soon opened to a view of the bridge over to the island.
Dauphin Island
Dauphin Island was nothing like the beaches we had seen in Florida or Gulf Shores. There was no commercialization at all. In fact, there was an attendant to pay to park. $10 for a car, $3 for people on foot. I’m not sure how they tracked people on foot coming in, since there was no fence to keep fence-jumpers out.
The schlep from the parking lot to the beach was much longer than it was from our condominium to the public beach in Pensacola. It was longer than the schlep between the condominium to the public beach in Galveston. This time, in fact, we had to schlep our beach stuff through 2-foot-deep water … TWICE! Overall, it was about a 10-minute hike/swim to the spot on the beach we picked out.
Before we really settled in, Stacy’s daughters joined us, and the girls all went out playing in the surf. We eventually had to pack up and make the 10-minute schlep back to the cars. Stacy suggested Pelican Reef for dinner, a marina/restaurant on the road back.
Pelican Reef
The hostess placed us outside of the main building on what was an enclosed deck with a view of the river and the boats docked at the marina. As I sat, I could see several fish jumping on the other side of the river. I thought it was ironic. All these fishing boats across the river from all those fish that obviously wanted something to eat. If only someone had a boat or knew how to fish …
Maybe it was because we were super hungry, but the food seemed like it was some of the best we had on a vacation. Emma and I had hamburgers, Cooper had sliders and Amy and Stacy had BLT’s. All I know is that at the time, this was one of the best meals I’ve had on this vacation.
After dinner, we said our goodbyes to Stacy and the girls and started on the trip back to the hotel. Stacy’s daughters had started out several minutes before us and Stacy was taking a different route back to her house. We unintentionally caught up to Kylie and Kaitlyn and had a brief conversation with them between cars. They kept going down the road and we turned to pick up some things from Cindy and Craig’s.
The Long Road Home
The next morning, we woke up early to pack and get ready to go. We had another waffle-less hotel breakfast, then jumped on the road home. After a short 15-hour drive, we pulled into the garage, unloaded the car, and hit the hay.