Rainy day at the beach:by Mom and Luke

Alvidrez road trips usually have a lot of hiking involved.  We seldom stay in super touristy areas – we don’t need nightlife or trendy restaurants.  We like natural beauty, animals, farm stands, mom and pop hole in the wall restaurants, and peace - so the kids can sleep well.  Therefore we hike to the beach and stay away from the beachfront. Plus, let's face it, we can't go on these long vacations if we stay in pricey places! (But, would we stay in a beachfront Hilton?  Yep.)

Which is all well and good when the weather is balmy and fair, but truly stinks when it is pouring rain like it was when we woke up this morning!

So we waited. And eventually we decided that an hour without thunder was long enough, even if it was raining a smidge.  So off we went.

And the rest of the story is as told by Luke.

We had fun swimming at the beach today! The weather was warm and humid with thunderclouds, but it didn’t rain while we were there.  We went really far out until the water started feeling chilly.  Which was weird because it was warm closer to shore.  So we raced each other back towards the shore.

The storm looming in the distance.

We saw a lot of sea creatures today.  I was surrounded by little fish.  They were about as big as ½ of a dollar bill.  I caught one with my bare hands, but I let him live.  They liked to kiss everyone’s legs and feet, that took some getting used to.  Mom and Dad each were pinched by a crab today.  Neither of them appreciated it, but they said it didn’t hurt.  Mom accidentally touched a jellyfish, but it didn’t sting her.  Gabi thinks she was stung by a jellyfish – once on each leg.  We aren’t sure what happened there, but we took care of her, just in case. 

Dad and Gabi are sunburned a little.

Mom is a lobster.  Isa and I aren’t bad at all.  Yay!

Gulf Shores!

We have lived in Alabama almost a year and we finally made it to the famous Gulf Beaches.  We have heard so many glowing stories about the paradise that exists just six hours south of us.  So many that we were a bit concerned we would be disappointed.  Well, we weren’t!

The water is delightfully warm – just cool enough to be refreshing, but warm enough to jump in without squealing.  That is the measure of water these days, the volume of the squeal from the kids.  The only sound we heard today was laughter.

Which is good, because it appears that we made a number of rookie mistakes today while happily playing in the surf.  First, we walked right into the path of a lightning storm.  Big gray thunderclouds looming in the distance eventually weren’t so far away.  Not so good when you walked over a mile from your campsite.  It is amazing how fast little legs can move when there is lightning approaching.  Second, we were swimming as dusk was approaching.  After we were safely back at camp Michael read that is shark feeding time.  And that there was a shark sighting in this area just a few days ago.  Whoops again.  And last, but certainly not least, jellyfish are real.  We’ve been all over the place in different seas and oceans and have seen lots of jellies, but none of them have ever been close enough to worry about.   But with the storm churning up the gulf things were not as tranquil as we expected. Few things get this mama out of the water faster than looking over and seeing a jellyfish 12 inches from her hip.  Yep, everyone out.  Isa had complained that something stung her about 45 minutes before, and I got out and did the whole scraping protocol and looked for stingers and didn’t think much of it – sent her back to play in the water.  She had a whole lot of red streaks down her leg, but I thought it was related to her scratching her leg with her nails.  But she seemed fine at bedtime, so who knows.

But somehow we returned to our campsite without major incident, where we happily sat in our air conditioned RV and dried out.