Touring the Gulf...

We've spent the past few days enjoying the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. We started our drive along the coast in Louisiana, after we left New Orleans. The Crescent City was itself a fun stop. We checked out the French Quarter and had a fun night out on Bourbon street.

The most noticeable parts of the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi are the off-shore rigs. I'm not sure whether they are oil or natural gas, but there are lots of them. It's strange to look out from the beach and see these massive structures off in the distance.

Once we got to Alabama, we stopped into Mobile. For such a large city, it was suprisingly dead on a Sunday afternoon. Everything was closed up and we saw just one person walking their dog as we walked around the downtown.

From there we kept going east. We've camped on two beautiful islands, Dauphin Island (AL) and St. George Island (FL). Much of the coast that we've been driving along is protected by barrier islands which with their large sand dunes take the brunt of coastal storms, sparing the mainland.

The water and beaches were the prettiest along what they call the emerald coast, a 50 mile stretch from Pennsacola, FL eastward. Camping among the sand dunes is some of our favorite camping and we've had lots of enjoyable nights, though still a little on the hot side.

We're contemplating our next move as we speak, because Hurricane Frances looms large just a few hundred miles from the eastern coast of Florida. NOAA tracks it into Georgia by 8 AM Monday. We may have to suffer through a windy and rainy night, if the storm turns northeastward after it makes landfall. We've got our weather radio so we'll be keeping an "eye" on it!

We'll upload some more pictures the next time we get online!

Jonathan & Christina