April 6 – 7, 2011 Ft Pickens gets a 2nd look…

We reluctantly leave the Low-Key Hideaway on a beautiful morning, returning to Hwy 19 and driving north to where we intersect with I-10, and begin our westward trip home. We pull in to the Fort Pickens campground near Pensacola after taking a “shortcut” that inadvertently costs us over $12 in tolls. I have great difficulty with backing the trailer into our spot without going off the road, after such a beautiful job at Cedar Keys. But that is life.

Battery Langdon.

Grass as artist.

The view from Battery Langdon.

It is still daylight so we walk on the beach in a nice 72 degrees, Marcia collecting seashells and I gathering tar-balls, both happy in our choice of souvenirs. I go on ahead and explore the Fort Langdon Battery, started in WWI but completed after hostilities ended; it was again used in WWII and could fire a projectile 17 miles seaward. I don’t believe it ever did any damage to an enemy, but a number of American soldiers suffered bleeding from the eardrums and mouth and lifetime tinnitus whenever it fired. (We stayed here in January on our trip eastward, when the morning temperature was 32 degrees and BP contractors were cleaning the beach. No sign of that today, and the temperature is certainly much pleasanter.)

The Dew Drop Inn - Mobil

The next morning we return to I-10 and our drive west, admiring once again the green corridor of trees through Florida (although a peek to the side shows much logging just out of sight). In Alabama we pull into Meaher State Park, on Mobile Bay, very pleasant with full hookups. We notice several Airstreams with numbers, meaning they are members of our WBCCI club. Hungry, we drive to the Dew Drop Inn, a Mobile hot dog and hamburger place since the 1920s, and since the 1960s at its current location. Nothing surely has changed – worn Formica tabletops, very simple menu, still popular with young and old. We pass on the famous dogs and order hamburgers with chili, the cheeseburger of course with American cheese. The onion rings are mild and great and the burgers are very good and with the chili are much like sloppy joes.

Battleship Alabama - Mobile.

After lunch we take an historical driving tour of the Mobile downtown, seeing a variety of well cared for small and large wood frame homes from long ago. There is little activity or traffic downtown, hard to tell if it has always been this way or Mobile is in a major downturn.

Rebel redoubt.

Yankee rifle line.

We then go to Blakeley State Park, where the last major battle of the Civil War was fought, ending on the same day but hours after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee in Virginia. There are only three cars here, our paths crossing as we wander about on mostly dirt roads trying with great difficulty to understand this not well documented site. The Yankees won the battle capturing over 3000 Rebels, but lost more soldiers dead or wounded in the process than the Rebels

Big Bend Florida unit at Blakeley State Park.

Back at our camp, we see there are now five other Airstreams and soon we are invited over for appetizers and conversation. They are from the Big Bend Florida unit and are having a rally at this park. All have deep southern pleasant drawls and soon I begin to understand how cousin Gail fell in to these speech and language patterns after less than a year in Texas. In conversation I try it a little bit and it rapidly becomes quite comfortable.