Somehow, we always find ourselves in the final stretch in a city with a thousand things left that we want to get done. No matter how much time we spend somewhere or how much we plan, we just never manage to fit everything in. I guess that always leaves the option of us coming back.
With Harley recuperating from her surgery, we wanted to keep an eye on her for a few days so on Saturday, I stayed home with her while John went to Pensacola to play in a Lorcana Tournament. For those that don’t know, Lorcana is a card game kind of like Magic: The Gathering but it is based on Disney characters. A new set released this week and John went to play and ended up taking 3rd place. Harley and I cleaned out my bedroom closet, caught up on laundry and dishes and napped on the couch. Also very productive stuff.
On Sunday, Harley was doing a little better so we decided to leave her at home so we could check a few things off of our list before leaving town. On the top of that list was to get an up-close look at the USS United States. This ship was built as an ocean liner in 1950 and 1951 and still holds the record for fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic Ocean in either direction for her maiden voyage in 1952. She was retired from service in 1969 and ownership changed hands several times over the next several decades. She was purchased by Okaloosa County, Florida with plans to sink her later this year or next year near Destin to form the World’s Largest artificial reef. In order to be rendered safe for the marine life that will eventually call her home, the ship must be thoroughly cleaned and gutted of any hazardous materials. This work will be completed by a company here in Mobile so she has been towed into Mobile Bay where that work will be completed over the next several months. She is very faded and rusted and looks like a beautiful, haunted phantom floating on the water.
We were able to get decently close and get a few photos although there was a fence between us and the bay. Of course the park where we are staying will be offering cruises to see her up close and personal but those start after we leave. Just our luck. We took several photos and left when we started to get hungry.
We have been to Mobile THREE times now and every time we have meant to try Dreamland BBQ but have never made it. We decided to remedy that situation today. The building doesn’t look like much from the outside but the food was really good. We each got a sampler platter (I got pork and smoked sausage and John got chopped chicken and ribs) and we got coleslaw, mac & cheese, baked beans, and fried okra to share. It was honestly all amazing and the service was really great too.
After lunch, we stopped by one of our favorite places in town- Cammie’s Old Dutch. This ice cream shop is a “must visit” location in Mobile. The ice cream is so good and it’s incredibly cheap. Last year, we visited several times and got milkshakes and sundaes and all kinds of crazy stuff. This year, with my diabetes diagnosis, we have been trying to eat a little better but we had to visit Cammie’s once. John got a single scoop of Moose Tracks and I got a scoop of Strawberry Cheesecake. It was heaven.
We ate our ice cream in the car and decided to make a drive down to Bayou La Batre. This town is the hometown of fictional character Bubba from “Forrest Gump” but is, like in the book, actually a huge shrimping town. Although they weren’t working, we did get to see a ton of shrimp boats docked in town.
We also drove over to a small park right on the coast and watched the fish and pelicans and sea gulls for a while.
On Wednesday night I went with John to his weekly Lorcana game in Spanish Fort. He had been playing with this group since we arrived in Foley back in November and was really sad to be leaving them. Everyone was so nice and really friendly. I hung out for the entire evening and John ended up winning all of his games.
We had a little bit of terror when we returned home, however. We walked in the door and there was blood everywhere. My first thought was that Harley had ripped out her stitches from her mass removal last week but they looked fine. We determined that she had been bleeding from the mouth. We couldn’t se an obvious wound but the blood kept coming from the lower right side- either her gums or her tongue or cheek. There was blood all over the couch and the blankets there and dripped across the floor. Harley’s legs and side were stained pink from her licking herself. We thought it was under control and went up to bed around 1230.
At 130, I rolled over and woke up when my foot hit something wet. There was a literal puddle of blood in my bed. I stayed up with her for a few hours and was about to wake up John for a trip to MedVet when it finally stopped bleeding. The next morning we looked in her mouth but couldn’t find anything obvious. She had a small bump on the side of her tongue but that was all. She was acting totally find and eating and playing with her toys like nothing had ever happened. As I write this almost a week later, we still have zero clue what happened.
We spent the next few days preparing for the bad storms that were forecast for Saturday. We were supposed to leave on Saturday morning to drive up the middle of Alabama to the town of Cullman but we were expecting strong winds, hail, severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes and the area of most danger was, of course, right where we were supposed to go. We decided to hunker down in our current camp site (which was still a 4/5 risk) instead of driving to the new park (which was 5/5). Our site at Historic Blakeley State Park was down in a little dip at the bottom of a hill and surrounded by hills and trees. The new campground – Palomino RV Resort in Cullman- is basically a big open field. We felt safer and more protected from the wind at Blakeley and, if things did get bad, we had friends there who had offered us shelter if we needed it. We took down the gazebo, put in the awning, and packed up all of the outdoor stuff.
On Thursday night we drove down to Foley to turn in our mailbox keys and check the mail one last time. We ended up picking up dinner from Cheeseburger Randy’s one last time as well. They have a very small menu but their food is absolutely delicious.
On Friday night, John went over to St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church to help with the fish fry. We have eaten there several times over the last two visits to Mobile and John heard that they needed help in the kitchen so he volunteered to help for our last visit.
I wanted to go and help cook, too, but it would have been too long to leave Harley and we didn’t want to push our luck with the recent surgery and the unexplained mouth bleeding. John went over around 2pm and got to work. He got to help with the fish, shrimp, oysters, grits, fries, and cobbler. He said that he had a great time and learned so much.
When I arrived at 5pm, he was working hard in the kitchen. I went through the line and got my dinner and he came out to talk for a few minutes when the line died down but, for the most part, he worked all evening. I went on home to feed the animals and he stayed to help clean up. He said that he learned so much and can’t wait to try our own fish fry when we get to Ohio to visit this spring.
On Saturday, we went out for breakfast and to pick up a few last minute necessities and then went home to wait for the storms. It was incredibly windy all day long and we were immediately glad we decided to postpone our move as it would have been impossible to drive with the house in tow with that wind. The rain started around 4pm and the worst of the storms hit us from 6pm until around 11pm. We did experience heavy rain, near constant thunder and lightning, and quarter-sized hail at one point but we made it through with no damage and were able to go to bed around midnight.
Sunday morning, we finished packing up and hit the road for Cullman. It was supposed to be a 4 hour and 10 minute drive but we passed a ton of accidents and stalled vehicles (not sure why because it was sunny and 75) so the 4 hour drive came in closer to 6. We did pass a lot of storm damage including downed trees and some debris in the road from time to time. We also passed an RV dealership where some of the RVs had been blown over or slammed into each other so that was definitely scary and made us realize how lucky we were that we decided to stay behind in Spanish Fort to ride out the storms. Apparently, a few tornadoes were confirmed along our route and near the new campground.
We arrived and setup the house – thankfully the sites are paved and level and were really easy to back into- then ran out for some quick food since we hadn’t eaten in about 8 hours. Then we came home and passed out because we were absolutely exhausted. We only have a few days at this stop but we needed rest before we could do anything.
