We went to Orange Beach, Alabama. We left on November 1; returned on Nov 9. We flew into Mobile Alabama; the girls were both great on the airplane. We rented a large home on the beach, not because we needed the extra space, but because we liked the location and the price was right (off-season). Carolyn was impressed with the house. She thought it particularly neat that there was a TV in every single room, and that there was a set of bunk beds too. Oh, and as you can see in the video, she also liked the shell decorations.
We had a bunch of baby equipment delivered for Elizabeth This made her quite happy.
We quickly made ourselves at home and were very comfortable in our new home. There were 6 bedrooms, as many bathrooms, several porches, a couple of living rooms, and am ample kitchen and dining area.
The house was only a few hundred feet from the boardwalk to the beach. This was both of the girls' first visit to a beach. The weather was in the 70s the whole week. It was the perfect, crisp beach weather, in my opinion. Because we were there off-season, we had the entire beach to ourselves.
The water was chilly, but that did not keep Carolyn from learning how to "surf" (on a boogie board). We also did a lot of shell hunting, sand-castle building, and kite flying.
When on the beach, Elizbeth mostly hung out in her tent or in the stroller. Sand and babies are not that great of a combination. And, she was not all that impressed with the ocean either.
Orange Beach had plenty to do. One of our favorite places was called the "Track" which had several different kinds of go-carts, an aracade, kiddie rides, putt-putt golf, bumper boats, etc. Carolyn was just barely tall enough to drive her own go-cart. She likely got whiplash the first time she tried it because she crashed so hard into the side of the track. The second time she was a little better (see video), and by the third try, she had it. My favorite activity was the large wooden go-cart track. I also went on the bumper boats with Carolyn and she, of course, thought it was hilarious to drive us into the spraying fountains.
One morning, on my way to the rec center for an exercise class, I found a great park with a huge playground. We went there a couple of times. Carolyn made a new friend each time. And Elizabeth experienced the swings for the first time. After our first trip to the playground, Carolyn came home and said, "Dad, we found a playground that looked like a castle. Mom fell down, skinned her knee and threw the baby. I got a bloody nose. And we all got about 15 mosquito bites." All true. Thank god, Elizabeth was strapped into her car seat when I tripped and fell.
Orange Beach / Gulf Shores has a zoo. It is a very small zoo, but for its size, it has an impressive number of large animals -- includuing lots of tigers and a couple of lions. You really get to see the animals up close. In fact, it was kind of unnerving to walk through the zoo because of how close all the animals were to the walking paths.
We took a boat ride on our final day to look for dolphins. We saw LOTS of dolphins.
The seafood was pretty spectacular. All of the locals were so nice. We will definitely go back to Alabama. For us, it was the perfect vacation.
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