Mobile, Alabama

We pulled into our campground in the early afternoon on Thursday, March 20.  There was no one to greet us at the office and every part of this RV park was disappointing.  I am not sure how I picked it but I immediately started to figure out how we could shorten our stay.  That afternoon I participated in an Addium-METER Foundation board meeting to choose our annual grant award recipients.  The rest of the family didn’t mind the unstructured time.  I think we had leftovers for dinner. 🙂

Because I had made a plan to only spend two nights in Mobile we tried to see everything in one day. But, it was very hard to get everyone up and going Friday morning.  Our first stop was the Gulfquest Maritime Museum.  It had 5 floors of exhibits about the Gulf of Mexico and boats and ships of every kind.  It was a fascinating museum and we spent a very fast two hours there.  My new learning of the day was that the gulf was a very dangerous place during WWII as the German U-boats made there way to destroy the supply chains on American war production.  Mobile was an important producer of ships.  So many workers came to Mobile that housing was scarce.  They were running production around the clock. Available housing includingplaces with “hot beds” where workers slept on them in three shifts so it was still warm when one man rolled out and the next rolled in!  For a while the U-boats had the upper hand but soon they figured out how to get the cargo around safely.  On the top floor there was a place to go out on a deck to look around.  There was a guy out there with a camera and when we came out he asked if we had any questions.  I asked him where the boat was going that was navigating up the river.  He explained that it was going Florida to be scuttled (sunk) to use for diving and to turn into a reef.  I was very confused about how any boat coming into the harbor could be headed to Florida and when I went back in the museum I was studying the maps to figure out how the boat would get to Florida.  David & Myra stayed out with the guy a bit longer and found out that the ship navigating up the river was NOT the one going to Florida!  It removed quite a bit of confusion but was funny he thought we were referring to a different ship than the one passing us!

After grabbing a quick lunch at the trailer we headed out to take our airboat tour of the Tensaw River Delta.  Captain Mark gave us a good ride in the boat and showed us a Nutria Rat, an Osprey building a nest, and three relatively large alligators!  I don’t think I had ever ridden in an air boat before and it was fun.  I was curious if the water was fresh water or salt water and he said it is both. Spring and summer when the flow is good it is fresh water. In the winter there is not enough flow from the river to keep the gulf back and so it is Brackish water, which means a mixture of salt and fresh water. I was surprised that they didn’t give any of us a life jacket for the ride!  Because of our shortened time I thought we would miss the battleship memorial park but it was on our way back from the airboat ride so we stopped in.  Unfortunately, the last ticket time had barely passed.  So, we went into Mobile and tried to follow the Dora Finley African-American Heritage Trail.  We had a good walk through Mobile (shares some architectural feature with New Orleans but it is not protected) but it would have been better if we could have taken an actual tour.  We found Satchel Page’s house area and the park where Henry “Hank” Aaron played when he was a kid.  Zina wanted to get out to play but being unfamiliar with the neighborhood and seeing no other white people (and no actual kids), I made us leave.

We decided we really WANTED to see the USS Alabama WWII Battleship so I made the kids get up earlier than usual and we spent two hours touring the ship before hooking up and heading to our next destination!  My learning today was that there were Marine Detachments separately quartered on board the battleship.  On the Alabama they were responsible for any landings.  I was also very interested to see their machine shop, with a lathe and other tools.  The sailors had SO many different jobs, including how to make the pieces they needed to repair their ship.  There were barbers, tailors, cooks, shop keepers, a sheriff, pressers, bakers, engineers who were in charge of maintaining the fresh water supply, and cobblers.  That is not the whole list I am sure.  We were there for a couple of hours and could have spent more time but we had a 4.5 hour drive ahead of us.

Here is Will’s take on Mobile:

Will’s take on Mobile, AL – The campground we stayed at in Mobile has been the first lackluster campground so far, so the parents made an executive decision to leave early, leaving just one day to see all that we wanted to see of Mobile. We started Friday with an amazing experience at the Maritime Gulf Coast museum. It showed how Mobile became a key part of WWII due to their ability to build boats at a rapid rate. We also learned that Mobile became overpopulated because of the thousands of job opportunities nearby. Often while shipping goods, boats would be shot by German “U-Boats” (Essentially Submarines) and have to abandon ship. This went on for some time, until the U.S. decided to have a plane follow each boat in case anything happened. Overall, the Maritime Gulf Coast Museum was a very pleasant educational experience. After the museum, we ate lunch, and then drove to an ecological airboat tour. The tour guide was very kind and seemed to know the landscape very well. We learned that ospreys have very loyal tendencies; only having one mate for life, only staying in one tree, etc. We also learned, however, that hurricanes will often wipe out the osprey’s nest, possibly kill or injure their children, or even uproot the whole tree. The whole tour was very nice and informative. After that, we went on a walking/driving tour of Mobile, seeing and learning about religious and cultural sites, such as the diocese of Mobile and Henry Aaron Park. That ended our tourist activities for the day and we headed back to the trailer and went to bed, which brings me to where I am now. Overall Rating: 7.4/10

Here is Myra’s first contribution to the blog: Hi guys! This is my first blog post. New Orleans was great! It had a sort of festive atmosphere, kind of like the Moscow farmer’s market, except with graffiti and a few sketchy places. There was music everywhere, and everything was super colorful. There were also houses from the 1700s, built by the French, that were super decorative and brightly colored. It seems like a nice place to live if you stay out of trouble.

Mobile, Alabama was a nice place. It wasn’t too quiet or too loud. We got to visit the Battleship museum, which is exactly what it sounds like: a battle ship that got turned into a museum after WWII ended.