Happy Weekend!

Friday was my birthday, and you know what that means: SPLURGE!! Thanks to timing and proximity, I chose a very special splurge this year:

Gulf Shores, Alabama

I had a lovely day of sun and sand and (window) shopping. I beach walked so much that the bottoms of my toes are raw from sand scrape. I love it.

Over the years, I’ve spent more weeks in this area than I can remember, and in my budget-free days, I would have had a beach front room with a similar view from my balcony. This time I chose to stay in the bay area city of Fairhope and commute to the beach for the day. It worked splendidly! In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I’ll probably continue to do it on future visits.

I arrived Friday night after a full day of work and a long drive, so I grabbed dinner and fell into bed. (I’m pretty sure it was in that order, but I could be wrong.)

On Saturday morning, I was out of the hotel at 6:00 a.m. and headed out to see what I might get into for the day. First stop: Fairhope Municipal Park for a walk around. Not much happening at 6:00 a.m., as it turns out, but they had a nice long pier and a small marina:

Okay, that’s nice, but I needed surf and sand:

That’s about as much real estate as I could afford here. Helluva view, though.

I made a new-to-me discovery after all these years of beach-walking:

I’d never seen anything like it, so I had to look it up to learn that it’s called a mermaid’s purse, and it’s an egg case for fertilized eggs of sharks and other fishies. I’m no marine biologist, but I think this one might be an egg case for a stingray because of the tentacles. Could be sharks, though, because there were a bunch of them in the area. I was out on the pier annoying the fishermen, and I spotted at least three sharks. (Tried to get a picture, but the sharks are mere shadows.)

After spending an inordinate amount of time watching the fishermen attempt to catch the sharks, I noticed that storms were blowing in. They caught me about 15 miles from the hotel. But what the heck, I had a full day of beach fun and I needed a car wash anyway.

This morning I returned to the Fairhope pier & park for a walkabout and arrived just in time to see this poor fellow get his fin hooked:

He was so scared! I was scared for a minute, too, because I thought I heard the fellow who caught him ask for a hammer. I wasn’t about to let him use a hammer on this sea turtle!

But what he really asked for was a camera. Just a quick photo op and then he returned his now hook-less catch to the sea. I love a happy ending.

And now I must return to my regular world. Because the hotel has a stupid rule about checking out of a room, I must begin my commute to Laurel, MS, city of tomorrow’s work assignment. But first, I’ll toodle about in Mobile, AL for a bit just to extend the weekend fun. Happy endings, and all that jazz.

I hope you’ve had a marvelous weekend and are looking forward to a great week ahead!