Gulf Shores in the Spring

We have made it to the beach in all four seasons, and I have to say that I think spring is my favorite time to go. Definitely better weather than when we went last December and we timed our trip perfectly, just after the spring break crowds had left and just before the summer trips had begun. I will mentally make a note of this time for next year. We had a wonderful time and I’d love to do it again.

We didn’t stay anywhere new. In fact we stayed at the same complex we had stayed the time before last, even on the same floor. I think everyone there had dogs with them. We shared many rides down the elevator with a pup or two. Of course once the drive was out of the way, our pups had a good time. Aspen enjoys beach patrol from her high vantage point while Daisy is just here to chill. We spend most of our room time on the balcony and we all love it out there!

Besides our daily beach hangs and evening dinners out, we got to do two fun activities on this trip. The first one was riding E-Bikes through the state park. We covered much more ground on these E-bikes compared to pedal bikes, and those few times I found myself lagging behind, I just had to turn the throttle and off I went to catch up with Stephen. We leisurely toured the park at a 10-20 mph speed. 10 is the posted speed, but we didn’t run anyone off the trail and made sure to slow down when we came upon other bike riders or trail walkers. Our final stats for the ride were 18.9 miles in 2 hours and 46 minutes. When we met the bike attendant to turn in our bikes he commented on how early we were, we had a four hour window of time for the bike rental. We thought we did great on time, but we hardly took any breaks. Just a couple really quick ones so that I could make sure I wasn’t getting sunburned and a couple fast water breaks as well. We found a hidden lake and stopped here the longest – long being maybe 5 minutes.

I was on the lookout for alligators and actually saw one, not here at the hidden lake, but couldn’t get Stephen’s attention to stop so I just watched it swim towards the bridge I was riding over. Maybe next time and we can come up with a signal so the other knows to slow down and stop.

Our other excursion type activity was a sunset dolphin cruise in the Wolf Bay. We had tried two times to do this when we came back in December with no luck. We made the boat this time! The one we chose was a 25 seater pontoon boat, so it had a very neighborly feel to it. Since we were on a smaller boat we could get up close and personal to the bank side and in addition to seeing lots of dolphins, we got to get up close to some eagle’s nests. One eagle was up above guarding its nest. It was really neat to see and the tour being around sunset made it even better. We had some beautiful views!

That about sums up our beach trip. We spent every day in the sun, got lots of steps in walking along the beach, and took in all the sea sights. We ate some great food, and every night we were out on the balcony. We had such a wonderful time!