Day 157 Panama City Beach - Dauphin Island-Alabama
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
167
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Where I stayed
Dauphin Island,
Alabama,
United States
Friday, October 10, 2008
We left this nice gulf Side town to head along the highway beside the Gulf of Mexico, This took us alongside an incredible amount of Condos and hotels built right on the sea shore, again not open beaches for the public. It appeared to have more public access points along this route than we have noticed before, but no car parks, so it is a little puzzling. We also managed to travel through a small place called Seaside, a town laid out to plan and built in 1981, this was the place the movie "Truman Show" was filmed. There was no need for them to build a film set for this movie, this town was perfect for the filming. We were unable to track our way through the town, apart from the highway route we travelled along, the streets off from the highway were narrow, but the grass alongside the road was as neat as a bowling green and the whole impression was picture perfect, as in the movie.
Along further the high rise diminished a bit too some open views of the Gulf, and also some parking spots alongside the walkways through to the beautiful brilliant white sand.
It was not a long stretch; but enough to give us some nice views of the water and the beach.
We stopped at a couple of Wal Marts along the way for a morning tea break and a lunch break.
At the lunch break there was a big Marquee set up with a lot of cars around. Upon making inquiries, it was discovered to be a car liquidation sale.
The cars being good second hand cars had been reposed or whatever, from owners or dealers, and are liquidated at the price owed on them.
For example, a 2004 white Mustang in great condition would be sold for around $10,000.
They had all sorts of vehicles including pickup trucks, vans and cars. There MUST be a way to transfer these back to Aussie!!
We crossed into another State (Alabama) and stopped off at the Information centre to obtain the road map. ( a required tool in case we lose confidence in Mandy and Earnie can then pick some route numbers for us.)
The route continued along some narrow roadways like a strip between water, to take us to a ferry crossing as we planned. Simply because it took us a different way than along freeways.
We lined up for the crossing amongst the cars and waited around 15 minutes, next to a few cars that were in party mode, ( there was a shrimp festival happening back from where we came from) so they were carrying on the party with loud music and continued drinking.
We eventually boarded the ferry and ploughed our way across the mouth of Mobile Bay, about 40 mins steaming. This took us past a few oil rigs dotted across this bay area.
It was interesting watching the ferry unload, the "party car" was just ahead of us on the left, directly in front of us was a car with a low bed trailer, the "party car" front passenger had the door open, even as the cars started moving forward, as the trailer moved forward the corner of the trailer caught the door! "Oh dear" the driver stopped before ripping the door off, but when he backed up, the door no longer closed correctly. They attempted to have a discussion on the ferry, but the ferry loader simply signalled them to roll off. When we rolled the castle off, all parties involved in the door re-arrangement, parked just off the ferry having discussions. Gee wonder what was being said?
We turned the opposite way to that path and drove to the RV park on the Island, about 300 metres down the road.
No TV and no WIFI, with facilities that require some attention, but never the less a good spot. Water of the bay in view behinds us, and a short walk to the other side of the park through some trees to the white sands of the beach, on the Gulf of Mexico.
We wandered down to watch the sunset and relax on seats on the beach, very tranquil and a nice end to the day.
After dinner we had a short discussion about plans going forward, and yes we are headed through Mississippi, onto Louisiana, to check out New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Karon had checked out the map and decided that we were close enough to Tennessee to head that way to check out Graceland.
So with that as a "plan" we settled in for the night to watch a movie then bed. As we settled to go to bed, apart from the acorns dropping from above with a loud BANG on the roof of our castle, a boat decided to either dock or move out, but the vibrations of the motors from the boat were VERY loud and felt like it was coming into greet us. Gee if it is not trains, planes or motor bikes, it is now boats. Oh what a lot of fun, the boat moved on and then a breeze came up, the awning was down, and it began an inconsistent rattle. GEE time to fix that at around 11:30 pm. Settle in again and sleep was next, UNTIL 1:30am in the morning, and someone had arrived to park next to us, with a torch being waved and instructions and directions being shouted to the driver from about 5 foot from our Castle, made for a fun night's sleep.
Oh well just another day on our journey.
