Tropical storm Alberto has landed and is moving north! We finally get to break camp and move east, and this gypsy soul could not be happier. 4 days at one place and I start to get a little too antsy. Thank you Louisiana you’ve been so gracious hosting us, the people more than kind, and the food incredible, but we got new things to discover. “To Infinity and Beyond!” Well, the Infinity Space Center in Mississippi anyway, our first stop of the day.
As far as interactive science/exploratorium type centers go, this one was just so-so. It was beautifully designed and had a lot of cool props, but the exploring interactive part wasn’t that engaging. My take was “all hat and no cattle” and Ned felt it was a missed opportunity. With that being said, we did manage to amuse ourselves for a couple of hours. The low point was being excited about experiencing the “X-Sphere-ience Theatre!” We were expecting to be wowed by some big screen movie with special effects. Not so much, it was a teenage girl (badly) reading a script while an ipad was projected onto a very small movie screen. The presentation was on climate change and geared for elementary age kids. Ned and I were the only ones in the audience. Awkward....
We did enjoy seeing the Atlas rocket engine. So impressive to stand next to it and appreciate its massive scale. I liked seeing the Apollo 4 space command module. It was launched unmanned into space in November 1967 and was only in flight for 8.5 hours. Sure did get banged up in that short amount of time! Seeing how astronauts live in space is always fascinating too.
We drove across Mississippi along the coast and really appreciated the blue skies, sugar white sand beaches and calm flat water. Across from the beach are miles and miles of huge mansions. I wish we had stopped and played for awhile in the Gulf. It looked really inviting, but...
we had a ferry to catch. We took it from Dauphin Island to Fort Morgan on the Alabama coast. We got there with 5 minutes to spare...whew. I honestly enjoyed the ferry ride as much as the NASA museum. The coolest part was seeing this odd looking ship called Deep Blue. Turns out it is “the world’s largest purpose-built ultra deep water pipelay and subsea construction vessel.”
Gulf State Park is our home this evening. It’s not your typical beach state park. This place is huge and more like a resort. There’s a golf course, tennis courts, pool, and lots of construction going on. They are building what appears to be high rise condos and a conference center. There’s also a 4 lane highway that runs right thru the park. We have a sweet campsite on a lagoon and there are tons of bike trails. Of course, we did lots of exploring. There’s an enormous fishing pier that seems to be the major attraction.
Okay, funny embarrassing story. When we arrived at the pier we saw some flags flying and recognized them from our stay at Grand Isle, LA. The red flag meant high danger swimming, the purple flag meant dangerous marine animals in water, but what did that white flag with the red x mean? We were coming up with all these theories. I thought it meant swimming not allowed. Ned was convinced it had something to do with scuba diving. I finally asked someone and she looked at me like I was a complete idiot and said “It’s the Alabama State Flag!” Oops.
Hard to believe this area was experiencing tropical storm conditions yesterday. Tonight we were treated to a gorgeous sunset. Red sky at night a sailors delight.
