Gulf Shores Spring Break 2021

Gulf Shores Trip
Overall weather was perfect except for Wednesday night and all day Thursday. Other than that it was sunny and in the high 60's low 70's all week. Wednesday during the day it got up to 80.

Friday-Montgomery South Rv Park
Saturday-Foley, Alabama-Lambert's Throwed Rolls Restaurant
Luxury RV Resort
Scooter Riding
Pool
Gulf Shores Public Beach
Sunday
Gulf Shores Public Beach-Sarah, Justin, Mommy-Daddy drove around, Jackson headache 😭
Swimming, shells, double red flag, no sun...still sunburnt
Hooters, Gulf Shores
Drove to Florida and went to Perdido Key Public Beach in Florida
Volleyball, football, swimming
Monday--Running 2.7 miles on the beach
Visited Bella Terra RV Resort
Jon visited Terry Cove, Buena Vista and Heritage RV Resort
Kids at Gulf Shores Public Beach
Mommy joined them after Bella Terra. 
Volleyball, Football, 66 degrees outside, still in the water. Brrrr
Dinner at Flora Bama Yacht Club in Florida (on the Florida/Alabama line)

NCAA SWEET 16 and ELITE 8.
Tuesday--Took kids to Bella Terra and all of us visited Heritage RV Resort. Both beautiful resorts.

Came home and ate lunch. 
Back to the beach.
Jon got seafood for dinner. We cooked at the RV park.
Went to the Hangout for drinks, ice cream and Live Music.
Back home for NCAA ELITE 8 basketball.

Wednesday
5 miler-Ran to Gulf Shores State Park
Laundry
Gulf Shores Public Beach
Shells
Football
Ocean
Big Mike's Steakhouse

Thursday
Super cold and windy. Walked 1 mile to beach. Very windy. Temperatures in low 50's with sustained winds of 15-25 mph and gusts up to 40. All night long. We didn't sleep well. 
After walk came home and took car back to Enterprise. Got Lyft from Phil back to RV park. Lunch-Sunliner Diner
Shopping at Surf Style
Decided to head out. But furnace isn't working so decided to stay in hotel. Lows in 30's all the way up I-65. Stayed in Pelham, Alabama. Near where tornadoes went through last Thursday. 

Michigan 2020

We had a great time in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan! We spent 10 days there and loved it. The lakes were beautiful! There were waterfalls everywhere. We loved Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island. Wonderful trip!

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Driving Home Day 2

We watched the forecast and decided to leave Wichita Falls last night. The first 3 hours were smooth sailing. Then it started to lightning. Then it started to rain. Thankfully the wind wasn't as bad as driving through Texas yesterday.  We are 2 hours from St. Louis. Jon slept at the park last night and the kids have slept a lot of this drive. I have been in and out of sleep. We had a couple of crazy lightning strikes that were scary close. But other than that, Jon has been driving like a man on a mission.

The kids miss Izzy. We all miss Izzy. We also are looking forward to seeing everyone and taking a break for a few days before getting back on the road. Looking forward to breakfast in the nearer future.

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Driving home-Day 1-Trip summary so far

As we drive along, I am enjoying thinking of all the great things we have seen and done. 

I asked the kids what their favorite parts of the trip were.

Justin--#1--Anaheim-Disneyland--Cars Land and Incredicoaster--He loved all of Cars Land and that was what got this trip started. "Mommy, can we go to Cars Land?"

#2--Cubs/Dodgers game.

#3--Grand Canyon National Park

Favorite food--Dodger Dogs

Jackson--#1--Disneyland--Splash Mountain and Radiator Springs Racers

#2-Cubs/Dodgers

#3-Palo Duro Canyon Jeep Ride/Pacific Ocean

No favorite food. He liked it all.

Sarah--#1-Disneyland--Splash Mountain and Incredicoaster and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

#2--Cubs/Dodgers Game

#3--Carlsbad Caverns National Park--Bats and Cave

Favorite Food--Big Texan Steak Quesadilla (She also ate a jalapeno pepper but it was NOT her favorite)

Jon--#1--Big Texan Restaurant

#2--Cubs/Dodgers Game

#3--Carlsbad Caverns National Park-Bat Flight

Favorite Food--He loved his Ribeye Steak at the Big Texan.

Rachel--#1--Disneyland--Snow White's Scary Adventures,  Mr. Toad's Wild Ride,  Cars Land, Pixar Pier--Loved all of Disney!! Loved especially how easy it was to get in and out and park hop! 

#2--Cubs/Dodgers Game

#3--Carlsbad Caverns and Petrified National Forest and Train ride to Grand Canyon

Favorite Food--Steak at Big Texan

We saw so much!  It is hard to find a favorite.

National Parks--

Alibates Flint Quarries-Texas

Petrified National Forest-Arizona

Grand Canyon National Park-Arizona

Organ Mountain National Monument-Las Cruces, New Mexico

White Sands National Monument-New Mexico

Carlsbad Caverns National Park-New Mexico

Excursions--Palo Duro Canyon Jeep Tour--Texas

The Blue Hole Natural Spring--Santa Rosa, New Mexico

Train Ride to the Grand Canyon--Arizona

Disneyland Park--Anaheim, California

Disneyland California Adventures, Anaheim, California

The Pacific Ocean--Sunset Beach, California and Huntington Beach, California

Cubs/Dodgers Game--Los Angeles,  California

Disney--I kind of wish we had done 3 days. But that really wasn't necessary. We saw and did almost everything we wanted to do in those 2 days. If anyone does Disneyland, I highly recommend paying for the Max Pass and the Park Hopper. Yes it is a price increase but it was well worth it!   We were very lucky that when we went, Star Wars Land didn't actually impact our trip. I thought for sure it would because I figured the crowds would be crazy. But because you actually had to have a separate reservation for Star Wars or you had to be staying on Disney property (which is out of this world expensive becaus because they only have 3 hotels), people just decided not to come until they open it up to the public. So that actually worked in our favor. Also we bought our tickets the night before on my phone which helped with our finances because it happened to be the first day of my new credit card cycle (yeah!).  But I might recommend buying them at least 24 hours ahead of time maybe not just 18 hours ahead. When we got them it said it would take 24 hours to see the tickets. This worried me for a minute. Then they were there. Right on the app. So no worries about that.

We also paid to park daily in the Disneyland parking garage. This was very convenient and not terribly expensive. It was $25/day but the convenience was worth it. We could have taken the shuttle from our park for $3/day but it didn't run exactly on Disney hours. We could have also Lyfted, probably for cheaper or for just as much, but it really was fine. I stopped drinking Starbucks and shopping for months to help save for this trip. So I was able to pay for Disney and Dodgers/Cubs out of that savings!

Restaurants--Big Texan Restaurant--Amarillo, Texas

50's Diner-Canyon, Texas

In-N-Out Burger-Arizona

Disneyland Restaurants--The Golden Horseshoe and Galactic Grill--I did not do my restaurant research for Disneyland. I was somewhat disappointed in myself for not being more prepared for this part of the trip. But it was nice to just go with the flow, and I had Disney Rewards Dollars to pay for the food inside the park. That was fantastic.

Hooters--Anaheim, California--Yes we ate at Hooters.

All You Can Eat Tickets at Dodger Game--Dodger Dogs were delicious!

Donuts Plus--Orange, California

Blakes-What-a-Burger--New Mexico

Pizza Inn-Carlsbad, New Mexico

We ate at McDonald's once (so far) in Oklahoma on the way.

We made several Walmart stops and ate a lot of food "at home." Many of the RV parks we stayed at had community grills we took advantage of instead of grilling at our sites.  So we would grill there and take it back, or like in Needles, we grilled and ate right by the pool. We ate chicken, pork, steak, hot dogs, hamburgers, tacos, lots and lots of ham and turkey and salami sandwiches. We are kind of sick of sandwiches.

We figured out how to use the oven so now we can even bake cookies or make pizza. We used the air fryer a lot and made tater tots, fries and wings at several spots.

Jon and I used Lyft by ourselves for the first time. Kids stayed at the RV park while we took back the rental car in Anaheim.

We rented 3 cars (for a total of 9 days) and we managed the other 11-12 days either walking or taking the motorhome, or driving in a limo to the Big Texan.  Most of those days were driving days anyway.

Jon drove over 4,000 miles. I drove, maybe 5 in the motorhome and maybe 100 in Carlsbad in the rental car.

This was definitely more than a vacation. It was an epic adventure. And it continues as we motor through Texas to get to Wichita Falls tonight. Hoping we don't have to deal with storms tonight as they are in the forecast.

We are about 60 miles from Wichita Falls and the wind is definitely picking up!! Radar shows a few small storms on the radar. We should make it to Wichita Falls before anything too heavy hits. It was showing more in Oklahoma on the radar.

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Carlsbad, New Mexico-Day 2-The Caverns

We headed to the caverns again this morning to do the cave tour. We decided to hike in and take the elevator out.  This was recommended by several people we talked to.

So we began our descent around 11am. The hike down is extremely steep. We entered in the same entrance that we watched the bats exit out of last night.  We saw lots of cool formations as we walked down. And of course this was the coolest (temperature) of all of our hikes at 56 degrees. But, we were moving so we didn't get cold at all.

The hike down took us to "The Big Room," which was the main thing we had planned on seeing. It really is amazing and beautiful and dark. The pictures will not do it justice. Stalagmites and stalagtites everywhere. Draperies and columns. Just beautiful cave formations. It was certainly magnificent. We finished around 1pm with an elevator that took us up 750 feet out of the caverns. Better than being lowered and raised in a guano bucket and then climbing wooden stairs in and out, which is how people enjoyed the cavern in past years.

We are headed back into Carlsbad and the campground. Will likely swim today and get ready to leave tomorrow morning.  Still 103 degrees.

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Carlsbad, New Mexico--Carlsbad Caverns Day 1-Bats

We left Roswell and made it to our final sight-seeing destination of Carlsbad, NM around 11 this morning. We hit up Walmart and picked up the rental car. (yeah!)

We are staying pretty far out of Carlsbad, but the campground is a KOA and is quite nice. There is a pool and we definitely took advantage of it because of the extreme heat again.  100 degrees is hot no matter what.

We drove about 45 minutes to Carlsbad for the evening to check out the bat flight. We got there way early, so we checked out the gift shop and book store. Sarah pretended to be a caver in one of the exhibits. That was funny.

We headed over for the bat flight program around 7pm. It would start around 8pm.

During the bat flight you are not allowed to take pictures of any kinds. But before hand I took lots of pictures of more prickly pear cacti, the natural entrance to the cave, and the cave swallows,  which are birds that fly around the entrance of the cave. The ranger told us that as soon as the cave swallows went into the cave we could expect to see some bats start coming out. We watched the birds disappear and just like that, about 3 minutes after the last bird went in, the bats started to fly out. At first it was just one bat at a time, then ten, then hundreds of bats. We had to be super quiet when they came out. It was amazing. The bats just kept rolling out of the cave. The ranger said there are approximately 300,000 bats in this colony. I couldn't even estimate how many we saw fly out of the cave, but we watched them fly for about 25 minutes. The sky was just covered in bats.

The view from the national park was beautiful too!  We will head there again tomorrow to walk down into the caverns! 56 degrees year round down there!!

Then our journey home will begin on Saturday. We will be heading home via Wichita Falls, TX. 

We have had a wonderful trip!  But we are all ready for our own beds, and especially to see Izzy!!

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Pictures of the Drive

For some reason, I can only upload about 4 pictures per post. Here are some from the drive today.  From Alamogordo to Roswell via Ruidoso.

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