Our next travel day would be to our last stop in Alabama. A three hour drive later we pulled into a new park for us, River Delta Marina & Campground. This is a County Park just north of Mobile Alabama in the small town of Creola, AL. The sites aren’t the best laid out but we sure did like the daily rate of $19.80 per night for full hook ups. Then we discovered they offer a senior discount of 10% on top of that, what a deal!
Even better is that the park has a really nice nature trail adjacent to the Tensaw River. This is also a boat marina called River Delta Marina where we saw lots of boaters heading our for a day of fishing. The Mobile River is also reachable by boat from here.
The nature trail is all on boardwalk and isn’t very long but it became a good part of our daily walks as we took in the beautiful swampy scenes, listened to the birds and were always on the look out for American Alligators, of which we saw several. The bald cypress lined river also made for great evening strolls as the sun was about to set.
The park was a great location for us to explore Mobile Alabama and we also wanted to drive over to see Daphne Alabama while here. We have driven through Mobile many times but never ventured to the downtown area. After spending some time downtown we found the city to have a nice vibe and you can tell there is a big push for development . Yet, we noticed a lot of dilapidated structures as reminders of past storms.
We learned that the USA Mardi Gras celebrations supposedly began in Mobile and not New Orleans. However, there is much heated debate about its true beginnings.. Nonetheless Mardi Gras is widely celebrated in Mobile and even in October there were remnants of past celebrations as old beads could be seen hanging in tress everywhere in the downtown area.
The architecture in the older historical parts of town also resemble the architecture seen in much of New Orleans. We really enjoyed our stroll around downtown delighting in the murals and occasional art pieces throughout town. We even found a nice spot to have a cold Alabama crafted beer at the Oyster City Brewery after our long day of exploring Mobile!.
We wanted to come into Mobile Bay from the south to proclaim 'Damn the torpedoes!' But did stop to see the USS Alabama.
ReplyDeleteGlad you took the time to look into the history and share it with us.