March 17, 2025
Our arrival at Sun Outdoors Orange Beach RV Park in Alabama was about a week later than planned due to our stop for repairs in Nacogdoches, TX but earlier than it might have been. The folks at Xtreme worked hard to get us done a week earlier than the original estimate.
We stayed overnight at a Walmart in Livingston, LA on the way over. It was a roomy parking lot which was nice but the Walmart was a few miles off I10 in a busy neighborhood. Not the best place to drive through at late rush hour when it had been raining. But in the morning it had cleared up and was easy to get back to the interstate.:
We have been this way before, just get on the Interstate and go. Not too long and we were at Mobile and down through the tunnel under the ship channel. And then a long causeway over the north end of Mobile Bay, another 10 miles and exit at Bucees. Three exit lanes, one North, one South, and one for Bucees. We went South to the beaches.
The Baldwin Beach Expressway gets you as far south as Foley then it becomes the Foley Beach Expressway. All heading for the beaches. You have to drive on a high bridge over the Intercoastal Waterway to get to the island where Orange Beach and Gulf Shores are located. This has always been a privately owned toll bridge. The State bought the toll bridge last year and made it toll-free and took control of the Expressways from the County to bring them up to state highway standards. It is also building a third bridge over the Intercoastal Waterway to the Orange Beach end of the island. All of these changes ease traffic loads on the existing bridges and will provide more hurricane evacuation routes. They are also building a pedestrian/bicycle bridge over the Waterway in Gulf Shores to increase the traffic lanes on the car bridge at that end of the island.
This is good but it is in response to the huge increase in population expected in the coming years. Foley, AL just to the north is the 10th fastest growing area in the country.
Life on the island may get busier, but life on the island still seems more relaxed than it is north of here.
At the end of the now-free bridge, we turn West for a quarter mile and then South into the RV Park.
It doesn’t take long for us to get the circus set up. Christmas lights first.
We got a new canopy at Costco. We thought about bringing an umbrella but this works quite well for shade and some rain protection. There are lights in the canopy. Our pop-up tent in front of the coach works well as a garage for the bikes. We have no idea why there is a purple reflection under the canopy from the windows on the coach
Flags up! Starlink up! Flag at Half Staff for Jimmy Carter. We even have a newly redesigned Minnesota State flag and a Pirate flag for when the mood suits us.
We always bring jigsaw puzzles along. This one was a Christmas gift. If is a nice image and fun to do. We work on them together, Susan seems to do more than I do,
This one is a laser-cut wooden puzzle. If you look closely there are animal-shaped pieces.
This picture was in the Vet’s exam room. We looked all over for a print or the artist and had no luck so I took a picture of the picture, did some editing to clean it up and make it bigger and had it printed at Shutterfly. We will frame it when we get home. And maybe make more for our dog friends.
We have a small Christmas Tree, just right size for the coach. And there were gifts to fit underneath.
All good Scandinavian hot dishes need a soup base. This one came highly recommended. We have never seen it in the stores and if we did, we just might pass it up. It is the extra chunky part that wouldn’t sit well with me.
We made Swedish meatballs from scratch for Christmas Eve dinner. They were quite good, maybe not as good as Christmas Dinners remembered from when I was a kid but who knows how good those memories are. Next year we may bring fixings for a proper Swedish dinner from Ingebretson’s Swedish deli in Minneapolis.
Maggie likes the Dog Park here. It is mostly sand. She will chase her toy once or twice and then starts digging as deep a hole as she can. She looks like she is trying to bury it but we don’t think she quite has the bury and hide it idea figured out. Everything gets covered in sand.
We drove over to Pensacola to Joe Patti’s Fish Market. We stopped for lunch on the way there at the Oar House. A pretty good lunch. We came home with both raw shrimp for grilling and steamed shrimp for a peel-and-eat dinner. They are always good.
We made it to another New Year. Not much fanfare here for us old folks but we had a nice dinner. I don’t think we even heard the fireworks from the Wharf at midnight, we were fast asleep.
More Later, Much Love,
Maggie, Susan and Roger
Home2 with Roger and Susan 