So, on we drove deeper into the south.  To places that had seen the ravages of the Civil War which was not civil at all.   Thankfully, many of the little towns were bypassed and were not destroyed by the Union soldiers.

One little town was welcoming Spring. It seems Spring was late almost everywhere this year.

Over tall bridges over rivers running throughout our country.

Until off in the distance we saw another bridge we were going to cross onto an island.

We are getting closer.

Ocean on either side of us.

Up and over and we landed safely on the other side!

Here we were in Dauphin Island, Alabama.  I had never heard of this island until a few weeks ago when David and I were discussing where we were going on our road trip.   He asked me if I wanted to go to dolphin island. “Dolphin Island!”   “No, it’s spelled D-a-u-p-h-I-n Island.  We can drive to it.”  “Okay,” I said and now here we were.  I did not get a picture of the motel in which we stayed. It was called Gulf Breeze Motel and was your quintessential island home away from home. Painted an ocean blue and white on the outside.   The bed was covered with a comforter with shells and fish on it. The dresser had shell carvings on its front.  Island birds and animals pictures were on the walls.  The windows were open with the ocean breezes blowing in. It was indeed magical.  Right across the road was the beach, but would you believe, we never got to that beach.  Not once.  But we did get to a beach. One less traveled.  One you had to walk a two mile round trip to get to.

The first day I made new friends.

Just a few feet from our motel’s front door was a little pier and these guys were gathered there.  I just happened to have some crackers in the car and they loved them. And they called their friends.

Soon we had several seagulls flying around us.

They posed for us.  Seagulls are one of my top five favorite birds. They are really what I miss the most about the beach.

On an island? There has to be a flamingo somewhere.

We wanted to go to the beach and we were told if we parked at a bird sanctuary on the island we could walk to the beach.  We weren’t told it was a two mile round trip, but it was worth it.  Although we heard not one bird while walking through the bird sanctuary we did enjoy the peacefulness of it and we seemed to be the only people there.  When we finally got to the beach, it was almost empty.  David played in the water and I laid on the sand and listened to the ocean.  We walked a way down the beach and saw a dead crab, a child’s shovel and a few shells.  Away out in the distance we could see oil rigs.  Oil rigs surround the island.   It was so wonderful. Not the oil rigs, just being at the beach with the sun and the sound of the waves.  I have always been in awe of the ocean.  But we are northerners with very white skin and soon we were both showing a little redness and remembering horrible burns we got years ago on a South Carolina beach, we decided to head back.

The second day on the island we left the island and drove a few miles north of it to a wonderful place called Bellingrath Gardens.

Heading there we got on this road.

Surely these gardens were not on this road.  Miss Garmin!!!!

All we saw on this road was this fancy rooster who acted like he very seldom saw other humans except his own.  The music from Deliverance was running in my head at this point.

And David would NEVER admit he was lost. Until we came to a dead end and had to turn around.   But we did find the garden so all was well.

Land purchased by a Coca Cola CEO in the 1930’s held only an old fishing shack, but he and his wife built a magnificent house and planted wonderful gardens on 65 acres and opened the gardens to the public.  The gardens were opened to the public off and on until Mr. Bellingrath died in the 1950’s and has been open to the public ever since. What a gift they have given to all of us. For a fee you can tour their house(we didn’t because we knew it would take us all day to see the gardens even though we were told it all could be seen in a couple of hours) and tour the gardens spread out along the Fowl River.  Here are some of the flowers we saw….

 

These look like cyclamen, but I am not sure. I was entranced by them because I have never seen flowers like this.  So sweet.

Orchids in the green house.

Even pineapples were growing.

Fountains all around.

The smell of roses filled the air.

A little mermaid.

More live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.  That always says the south to me.  Always.

Mrs. Bellingrath was a woman of faith and had a chapel built on the property.  Weddings are sometimes held there.  The windows were exquisite.

Everywhere you looked there was eye candy.

The house was indeed grand and overlooked the river.  But it took us hours to go through the gardens.  I’m not done yet.

There was a wooden walkway you could walk around an estuary.  Of course it took us a while to walk it as we had to look at everything.

We were surrounded by scenes like this.

A lookout built above the estuary.

Lots of fish. This guy looks about right for frying up in a skillet!

And look at the claws on this guy.

Bamboo grew abundantly.

Two old lions making friends.

Trumpet flowers falling on my head!

David called this the Medusa log.  Looks like Medusa’s head, doesn’t it?

We saw this plaque on the way out.

It’s Rebekah at the well giving water to a servant sent to find a wife for Isaac.    It’s a story in the book of Genesis.  Another of Mrs. Bellingrath’s homages to scriptures.

It was a totally wonderful day and it did take us hours to go through the gardens.  Everywhere there were people working on the gardens planting new flowers and mulching. It’s a never ending job.  The only part I found that seemed to not belong was an Asian garden. I don’t think it’s original to the gardens. It was poorly kept and had very few if any flowers. I don’t know if it was under construction or something or was not as popular as all the rest.  It just didn’t fit in.  But all in all, if you are ever in this part of the country, Bellingrath gardens is really worth seeing.

We went through the gift shop and David bought me the prettiest umbrella.  I had been complaining to him a while back when it was raining, that I could never seem to find an umbrella.  Now I have one of my own.

On our way back to the motel we passed this.

An old fashioned tent revival.  I would have liked to have gone, but David was tired so we passed on by.  Next, we visit a Civil War fort and head back north. Bye.

 

 

 

 

On up into the Olympic Peninsula we drove.  It is so beautiful there.  Forests and mountains and rivers and mossy trees.  You can imagine a Sasquatch walking in these forests.  I really would not want to spend the night in them!   The landscape reminded me a lot of Alaska.

We kept seeing signs for Big Cedar.  Now we have seen the Sequoias and I don’t think any tree could be as big as they are, but, hey, there was a big cedar waiting to be seen so we decided to see it.   Finally we saw the road off to the Big Cedar and we parked and walked about a half mile back into the forest.   We met a couple coming from the opposite direction and asked them if it was a Big Cedar?  “Pretty big tree,” one of them said, but I thought I saw a smirk on their faces. so we continued on the path until its end and this is what we found.

Yes, a big, DEAD, Cedar!   At one time it ruled these forests, but not anymore.  We laughed and went back to the car.  Well, it was a good walk, anyway.

So on we drove when, “What?!?  Another sign for a Big Cedar.  Could there be two or did we just get fooled?   So, of course, we followed the road back to this Big Cedar. Five miles.  We drove and drove. I wanted to turn around and go back, but David was determined to see the Big Cedar.  We passed one car coming from the opposite direction and I wondered if it was the same couple and if they were laughing at us for driving to see the Big Cedar.   Then we came to the end of the road.  There was an old wooden path and a bridge to the Big Cedar.  This is what we saw.

Another almost dead tree standing there in the forest with two crazy people looking at it.  Did I hear laughing somewhere?    Well, it was a good drive and a good time to stretch our legs.

At one time this tree was magnificent, but it’s seen better days.  I had bought a post card to send to one of my grandchildren that had a really big cedar with a man standing by it. I think it might have been this tree in the fifties.

So, on we drove.  With glimpses of the Pacific.

Isn’t it beautiful?  We do have a grand and glorious country.

David almost took a tumble at one of our stops when he stepped on some loose rocks at the edge of a cliff.  I was thinking I would appear on the ID channel as a wife who pushed her husband off a cliff to get her inheritance.  It really did scare me, though, because we had no cellphone reception and cars were few and far between.  I pictured me trying to get down the cliff and get David back up all by myself.   I really wish he would not get so near cliffs.

Since watching Treehouse Masters on tv, I have been wishing for a tree house.  Now this is a real tree house we found along the way.

Isn’t it cute?     We had more to see and a motel to find so onward we traveled. More my next post.  Bye.

 

David and I arrived in Seattle, rented a car and off we went on our adventure in the Northwest.   We couldn’t wait to get out of the city.  We are not city people.  We headed toward the Pacific Ocean where we had a motel for two nights at Ocean Shores, Washington. Being that is was off season it was not very busy in that area.

Our room faced the ocean side and this was the sunset we saw our first night.

There was a beach if you wanted to walk about a mile through bushes and beach growth and wonder if there were snakes around.   I don’t think this beach path has been used for years.

Instead we drove around the town and did some shopping and sight seeing.

You know you are in a beach town when there are sharks and seahorses around.

There were cute little shops and this was my favorite one.  They had so many things I would have loved to buy if we had our car and weren’t going back on the train.

It was cute on the outside and the inside.

I bought this  bottle of hand soap just because I liked how pretty it was.

Suddenly we started seeing deer.  Deer everywhere.  I had noticed a sign outside of town that said no hunting.  I guess the deer knew this.

Does and this little fawn.

And these gorgeous boys. They were smaller than our deer here in Indiana.

“Aren’t I handsome?”  He was not at all afraid of us.

Everywhere we turned, we saw deer.   Then we decided to drive onto the beach.

We had it almost to ourselves.  Just a few people.

I love the ocean.  There is something wild and wonderful about it.

We ate at this place one time.  All the locals seemed to like it.  You cannot go near the ocean and not eat fish.  Well, David didn’t.  He ate a hamburger.  But I had cod and clams and it was good.

The water was so cold the fishermen wore warm, waterproof clothes to fish in the water.  They looked like they were freezing.  I walked in the water and it was icy.

One of my favorite birds.  I have seen sea gulls on both coasts,  the gulf of Mexico,in Alaska, and in the Virgin Islands.  They all fascinate me because they are so aware of everything around them.  Drop a crump and suddenly you have twenty or more flying around you. I don’t know how they know when food is around, but they always do  They act solitary until food is around and then, bam.   Every bird for himself.

We left Ocean Shores for the Olympic Peninsula.  We didn’t get up there the last time we were in the Northwest and I always hoped to get back.  It’s about a three hundred mile loop around it so we decided to take three days to drive it.

There are lodges all around it. We stopped at this one to eat lunch.

How cozy is this?  It was chilly out and a roaring fire in the fireplace was just what was needed.  Big, comfy couches and chairs around it.  Wish we had stayed here.

As it was off season, there were a lot of empty tables.

We were seated right by the window and could look out at a beautiful lake and at birds eating at the bird feeders.

We learned this was a Stellar Jay,  not unlike the blue jays in Indiana.

This was our view while we dined.  All the Adirondack chairs waiting for people to come sit and look at the scenery.

Anyone could be a Sasquatch.  Just put your face in the hole.    Sad to say, we saw no Sasquatches while in Washington.

Maybe next time we will stay at this lodge.

We continued up the peninsula in search of the Big Cedar.   That will be in the next post.  Stay tuned. Bye.