Orange Beach, AL

(Wednesday Oct 30 - Dist: 34.8 mi; Temp: 70 F; TTT: 4:45 hrs)

We departed Fly Creek leaving the Fairhope Yacht club behind and entered Mobile Bay with a "Light Chop" today.  The sun was shining and the temp was already in the mid 60's.

Within a couple of hours we reached the Gulf Intra Coastal Waterway (GICW) and into a much more populous area and fairly calm conditions.

We soon arrived at Lulu's, Jimmy Buffet's sister's place, a great place to stop for lunch or even the evening.  I can just imagine how fun it would be during the summer or better yet, spring break.  Our lunch was very good and of course Linda had to stop by the store.

After lunch we had a brief chat with the Sergeant in charge of a group of Navy sea persons from different countries.  They were undertaking SEAL training and had motored from Stennis Mississippi across Mobile Bay to Lulu's for lunch.  The Sergeant told us that the top personnel might become SEAL's and the next best would be drivers for the inflatables and boats that they use.

You can certainly tell that we are at sea level as the cars on the road are at eye level with my helm.

A few miles further we reached "The Wharf" in Orange Beach.  It is a first class condo and business community.  It ran into some hard times but has been revived somewhat.  Now the marina is fully operational and there are a number of restaurants which have re-opened.  For Halloween they had a "Trunk and Treat" event where the local church had people decorate their vehicle trunks and hand out candy to the community kids.  I have never seen anything like. 

We met a great guy who is staying in the condos and he brought some great peel and eat shrimp to our Happy Hour.  He knows a common friend of Carlton's and agreed to take us to do some running around.  He even let Linda do her laundry up in his penthouse condo.  The photos from above are taken from either his front or back balcony.  He has a wonderful place.  BTW we invited him to Happy Hour again this evening.





The fried shrimp was very good as for the" entire civilized world"; maybe.

Tomorrow we are going to Pensacola to watch the Blue Angels, the Navy air demonstration team.  Locals say that you have to get there early if you plan on anchoring out to watch so it will be another crack of dawn departure.  At least the temps have got much warmer.