DAY NINETEEN - DAY TWENTY-TWO The Gulf of Mexico in Alabama.

DAY NINETEEN - DAY TWENTY-TWO The Gulf of Mexico in Alabama.

I feel like I could sum this up really quite quickly by just saying "this was where we were meant to be."

To be sure the drive to get to Alabama took a full day, and setting up in the dark, five feet from an alligator-infested canal was scary (I was told), but man was it worth it.

It still rained quite a bit, but when it wasn't, we were in the water snorkeling and swimming. It sort of made the beach umbrellas we thought we needed obsolete, but they did come in handy for snack breaks.

The sand at this beach was unreal. It was like light caramel colored powdered sugar. It actually squeaked when we walked through it; it was so fine. While it did bring me a slight flashback to April Fools Day when the kids literally covered my floors in powdered sugar, I was quick to recover. It was too perfect not to.  

The first day there we made friends with a little girl who had strawberry blonde hair, freckles, and a thick southern accent. She was totally adorable and loved a good chat. Near the end of the day, I happened to look down in the surf and plucked out a perfect black shark tooth. I showed all the boys and Jason was quite jazzed. When our southern friend came to look at it she turned her enormous blue eyes up at me and said, "Can I have that shark tooth?" I explained that I really wanted to keep for the boys and then she said, "But I never had a real shark tooth." Well, I couldn't argue with that, especially when we had a whole jar of shark teeth at home from a previous trip. I looked in the surf and sand the following two days for another tooth and never did find one.

On our last day at the beach, I told Jason I was going to see how far I could walk out before I couldn't touch and told him he was coming with. This was not his idea of a good time as earlier we had seen fins in the water that we half-heartedly identified as dolphins, but he came with anyway. Just as I was up to my shoulders in water, a school of Mullets dove out of the water right behind Jason and scared him half to death. We quickly laughed our way back to more shallow water, and I reminded him that they jump not only when they're being chased (by sharks), but sometimes just for fun. It was probably just for fun, right?

Later that evening, we walked the endless pier from which we spotted a shark. We ended the evening by going to a delicious seafood restaurant, where we all sampled gator and ate way too much.

This was everybody's favorite stop.