We were out late last night so I’m posting on the morning after…

I usually read to Mark while he’s driving on these long trips, and on this one he asked me to read a book entitled One Nation by Dr. Ben Carson.  You must understand, first of all, that Mark’s a registered Republican and I’m a registered Democrat.  Sometimes it makes for interesting conversation!

I was reading the first chapter where Carson recommended that the government give everyone an HSA (Health Savings Account) at birth, along with their birth certificate.  Now this is an interesting concept, but I could see some possible glitches in the idea.  I would think that the government might want to give parents an incentive to add to it by offering matching funds as long as the child was a dependent, but there would have to be a cap on it because billionaire parents could break the government’s bank.  On the other hand, children with a disability, such as Down’s Syndrome, would require a lifetime of government contributions, especially if they needed to be institutionalized once their parents could no longer take care of them.

This got Mark and I into a discussion about retraining society (Socialism), whether Adam and Eve were created equal, and vegetarianism.  As I say, our different perspectives lead to some pretty interesting conversations!  It helps pass the time.

So here are today’s shots:

Taken at a rest stop

Mark has been saying for the last couple months that he’ll be happy to see Florida in his rear view mirror. This made him happy.

We stopped in the visitor information center at the border and I heard an interesting conversation between the woman on duty and another visitor. You see that one flag is missing and the two of them were commiserating about it. She said she flies the flag in her yard at home. I believe, even though she wasn’t allowed to say it, that it’s the Confederate flag which has been under attack in recent years.

We arrived at our campsite around 4:00, got set up, went into the office to settle up, and then grabbed our cameras and went for a shoot.  Over the last year I’ve been hearing people say how nice Gulf Shores, AL is, so we made the half hour drive to the coast to see it.

A little color in Gulf Shores

We kept driving up and down Beach Blvd to try to find a way to get to the beach, but that whole side of the street was lined with hotels, homes and rental cabins.  This was the fanciest place on the beach.

Mark and I decided to go back into town for dinner and to reconsider how to see the beach.  (This is not the west coast, we kept reminding ourselves.  We’re used to the beach being free.)

We stopped at a boardwalk restaurant on an inlet:

We had fun with this photo board…

Mark’s take on it!

Man meets alligator

The inlet outside our window at the restaurant. I tried black and white because there wasn’t much color in the picture anyway.

Crabs claws – Yumm!

Most of the time the water was as smooth as glass, and then I noticed just before sunset that it looked like there were little disturbances in the surface, as though it was raining in just one area. I came to realize that the fish were surfacing, looking for insects that were beginning to come out.

As the sun was going down

During dinner, Mark was saying he had seen what looked like free parking on the opposite side of Beach Blvd from the beach, so we decided to try to park and get to the beach on foot.  We were hoping to see the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico.

Oops! The sun was setting on the land side.

Alabamans seem bound and determined not to have trash on the beach by providing garbage and recycling cans every few feet.

Mark, catching the waves

Dusk at the beach

For my photography friends, this was a hand-held telephoto shot on a windy beach. Neener, neener, neener!