Dauphin Island, Alabama

This morning we took a 45 minute ferry ride across Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island. There were a few items of interest that we wanted to explore but it just happened that today was some special celebration day and there were crowds of folks with no place to park at a couple of our destinations. We did get a parking spot at Gaines Fort which was a Civil war fort defending Mobile Bay from the Yankee navy. With Fort Morgan across the bay it was a tough passage for the union fleet but this was where it was said to "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" and the breach was made. It also was a special day at the fort with a gang of medieval days players putting on a tournament of knights in battle. That is were all of our pictures were taken. One of the other sites that we wanted to visit was the Estuarium, Dauphin Island Sea Lab. They were celebrating Discovery Day with special exhibits and no parking available for a quarter of a mile around. Another site we tried to visit was the Audubon bird sanctuary but their parking lot was small among the trees (go figure) so we just had some lunch and caught the 45 minute ferry (plus one hour wait time) back to Gulf Shores. The ferry was just one boat so the wait was while it made the crossing over and back.