Where the Dolpins play and the hurricanes rage (March 17)

May the road rise up to meet you and the wind always be in your back. …

St. Patrick’s day has a meaning to us because of Linda’s Irish heritage – in fact one of my nicknames for her is “Irish”. and (whether it has anything to do “Irish blood”) her favorite color fits with this theme. However, our celebration of the day is low key - often going by without a lot of hoorah.

In the morning, we returned to gutting the house. I was removing cabinets & plumbing fixtures to expose sheetrock in kitchen, and bathroom for “demolition” Linda and her boots. Actually, she spent a lot of the morning going around the top edges – up and down the ladder – removing a 2 inch strip of sheet rock around the top. (Obviously the house was built before a precise 8 foot ceiling was adopted ). Late in the morning I got into a difficult time removing some ¾”plywood that had been screw nailed into the wall to make a cupboard in the bathroom and it took some hard word to break the screws through the plywood. Boy I could have used a “saws all” for 2 minutes and saved a lot of energy!!

We played hooky yesterday (John Dobbs was wondering in his blog about where we were. We had told David Kilburn were going off for the afternoon and not to give away our spot but with everything going on I doubt he had time to mention that to anyone else. By the way, thanks to John and David’s son David Jr. for getting the wireless connection working again. I know I was whining about it a lotmore than I should have. I appreciate it)

Just before we left 2 ladies and one of their sons had come from Tennessee for a couple of days and David suggested that they could do “cleanout” at the house. We had been just piling stuff in the middle of the floor with the idea that next week we would grab some college kids to move it to the curb. I see from the picture on John’s blog that they must have gotten most of it cleaned out.

Anyhow, we took the “BBB” and went for a short trip over into Alabama to a small island (Dauphin Island) just below Mobile Bay. To get there you goover alongcauseway and then a fairly long bridge -- nothinglike the "Mighty Mac" orthe bridge to PEI but still veryimpressive. I didn't clock it but I'd guess it is 4 to 5 miles offshore. The picture is taken from the island looking back to the Alabama coast. You can just see the high part of the bridge in the background

The pamplet we got at the Alabama welcome centre described it as "Where the dolphins play". It was obviously inundated by the hurricane - all these fancy beach houses built on stilts (8 to 10 feet high) to avoid flooding were knocked helter skelter with many of them totally destroyed. The pictures don't do it justice.

Obviously, this is normally a bustling tourist area . It may have been a little early in the season but there was very little left of the restaurants, hotels and other things that you might expect in an area like that. The beach itself was really torn up and there were big banks of sand along the roads – The Canadians reading this will be able to visualize what our roads look like after a foot or 2 of snow has fallen.

It is a long narrow strip of land and I was looking to turn around. The only pavement was a narrow 2 lane street and Linda was deathly afraid (and likely with good reason) that I would pull off the pavement and go axle deep in sand. I found a driveway that looked fairly solid and turned in being careful to leave the drive wheel on the pavement – it took a couple times back and forward but we did get turned – don’t want to think ofwhat the towing bill would be if I had gotten stuck. -- The houses and beaches are at the west end of the island. The 2nd last picture - actually taken before the one of the houses is at the east end of the island showing historic Fort Gaines.

There are a lot of oil platforms in the gulf visible from the island. I guess they are up high enough and anchored well enough that the storm didn't hurt them too much but I don't know.

We stayed overnight at a WALMART (our favorite campground!!!) and did some shopping this a.m. before coming back to our parking spot beside the church.

Later
Charlie & Linda