Gulf Shores Days 4 and 5

Saturday in Gulf Shores was another great day! We had full sun all day long so spent most of the day at the beach. The traffic at the condo really picked up because of the holiday weekend. The red, white, and blue were in full force. And Mom even conducted an impromptu trivia game on the beach on the history of America...imagine that! We stayed on the beach until late in the afternoon.

That night the Bell family went out for dinner and the Worley-Dean family ordered carry-out from a restaurant nearby. We ate our dinner on our balcony while listening to a man sing by the pool, with the smells of Fourth of July all around us...lots of people grilling! We all wanted to make sure we were down at the beach in time for the fireworks. They were shot off about two condos down from us, so we had a great view! It was great sitting on the beach in our beach chairs and watching them light up everything around us. After the fireworks show some of us went to get ice cream at Bruster's in Gulf Shores...you have to get ice cream at the beach, right?

Morgan and Micah on the beach before the fireworks show.

Sunday was, of course, the Fourth of July! It was our last official day of the trip so we wanted to take advantage of it. Like every other day, we spent the majority of the day on the beach. Unfortunately the "double red flag" kept us out of the ocean, but we tried to make the most of it. It was another hot and sunny day...one that gave some of us too much sun! We stayed out on the beach until late afternoon, then went in to get ready for the night's fireworks show in Gulf Shores, just a few miles from our condo in Orange Beach. The show started at 9:00 and we watched from the back of Milton's Ranier, which we parked right on the side of the road. We had the perfect view! The show was right in front of us, full of red, white and blue!

After the show we headed into Gulf Shores to eat at The Hangout, a big restaurant with a huge outdoor patio...definitely a family place. Thank goodness we got there when we did; as we were walking in it starting pouring down rain! Imagine that, rain again on the trip? It was definitely a theme of the week. We ate, bought some souvenirs, and headed back to the condo to start the worst part of the trip: packing to go home.

Micah, Morgan and I watching the fireworks show. Like our red, white and blue?

We packed up all of our things that night, so we could leave soon after we woke up Monday morning. Our family had to go back through Nashville, so I could get my car and drive back to Louisville. The Bell family went back through Mississippi and West Tennessee. Our goal was to leave at 7:00 am. If you know our family at all, you know that we set goals, but rarely attain them. Ha ha! We ended up waking up at 7:15, so we quickly got up and moving!

After a short detour (okay, okay we got lost, with no iPhone or GPS) we were on our way! We made two stops between Gulf Shores and Nashville. The first was to get gas and no one even got out of the car except me. The second stop was to eat breakfast/lunch at one of the best restaurants ever: Cracker Barrel. I don't think my mom could have let the vacation go by without at least one visit there. We made it to Nashville in good time, then parted ways from there. I rolled into Louisville and parked on 2nd St. right at 10:00 pm.

All in all the week was great! We got some sun, ate good food, watched Morgan "fight the waves," saw two fireworks shows, and had some good laughs during all of it. Rarely is there a dull moment when it comes to our family! But as Mom always says, "It's back to the real world now." So as I finish up this blog post, I am dreading looking foward to going to class in a couple of hours. And I can't tell you how much I'm looking foward to walking to campus on what is going to be the hottest day of the year. :-)