Gulf State Park, Gulf Shores, Alabama

After much deliberation, we finally decided what we wanted to do today.  Gulf State Park hosts the Volksmarch for the Gulf Shores area.  Most often we do Volksmarches through historic downtown areas, but it is not uncommon for them to be in parks, especially National Parks.

Gulf Shores is only about 25 miles from our campground so it was an easy drive.  Gulf State Park was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Ivan and was closed for a couple years for repairs.  As a result, most of the buildings have had major repairs and we learned from a short conversation with one of the campers, that the campground has completely new water, sewer, and electric systems.  Our walk started at the laundry facility at the campground and took us along the main campground road.  It is a huge campground with nearly 500 sites, all paved including the patio, and with full hookups.  The sites are large like you would expect from a state park and will accommodate the biggest of the big rigs.  The campground is just across the highway from the beach and the State Park owns 2 miles of beach front property.  By the time we were finished with our 5 mile walk we were too tired and had been out in the full sun for too long to spend any more time walking along the beach.  There is much more of the park we didn’t see so that just means another trip to check out the rest.

The city Gulf Shores is very typical of the communities along the white sand beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.  There isn’t much to them other than restaurants, hotels, and condos surrounded by lots of sand.

As promised, I made a few pictures of the homes here at Rainbow Plantation.  The owners are RVers and you can see how they have included their RV in the design of their home.  There are many that look like any small home you might see in any neighborhood in America, but with a garage for an RV instead of a car.  Then there are many in which the RV is actually part of the home.  The owners still use the RV to live in when they are parked “inside” the house, but it is completely detached from the permanent structure and is available for travel whenever hitch itch gets the best of them.

Storm clouds have already begun to move in and the local forecast is for storms then rain tomorrow.  We’ll plan our day accordingly although at this time we don’t have a clue what we’ll be doing.