Alabama, Mississippi & little bit of Texas

Gulf State Park, Gulf Shores Alabama

After our cruise along the panhandle of Florida we stopped for three nights at this very busy park. I can understand why this park is so busy. The amenities here are fantastic. The campground is located along the ocean with beautiful sandy beaches, 26 miles of paved bike paths, a fishing pier, nature center, a live building interpretive centre (the building filters rainwater to drink, makes it’s own solar power etc), a heated pool, tennis, beach volleyball and horseshoes courts and free wifi throughout the park. I recommend this park to anyone who loves camping and the ocean- if you can get in. The girls loved the heated pool (at 83° it doesnt need to be a hot day to get in), we biked 14 miles of trails, saw a pod of dolphins and 3 sharks while fishing off the pier, saw a bald eagle and its nest along a biking trail, played some pickleball and basket ball, and got in the pool several times. So far this is our favourite state park of the trip.

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We made a quick overnight stop at Buccaneer State Park in Mississippi where we saw 5 wild pigs run through the park while we were at the playground. We had a campfire with our neighbours who had lots of stories about their home in Iowa. The forecast was calling for lots of rain the next day in Mississippi so we made an early morning exit for Texas.

Our first stop in Texas was Sea Rim State Park. The drive out there was interesting, the bridges in Texas seem to go straight up and straight back down and the oil refineries are something else. We discovered that we could camp right on the beach when we got to Sea Rim and enjoyed an afternoon campfire on our campsite.

Sometime in the night the mosquitos moved in. At 2 am I couldn’t stand the bites, and woke up and turned on the light to find the mosquitoes that were biting. The entire back wall (inside) was covered with hundreds of mosquitos. They were so thick they somehow managed to get through the vent fan (we think we actually couldnt figure out for sure how they were getting in). We found a new use for our handheld Dyson and it worked great! They unfortunately got the best of us in the night and Piper & Trevor were covered in bites by the morning. At daylight we went outside and found the entire outside of the motorhome also covered in mosquitoes. We went for a walk down the beach and saw 3 whopping cranes, 2 black and white hawk eagles, a great blue heron and lots of wild boar tracks all over the beach. After our walk we left quickly to get a reprieve from the mosquitos.

Next stop was two nights at Brazos Bend State Park south of Houston. This park has 300 large alligators found throughout the freshwater lakes in the park. We took a bike ride through the trails and discovered gators along the trails and riverbanks sunning themselves. The campsites were nice and we biked about 23 km of trails in the two days we were at this park. At the nature center the girls got a chance to touch a baby gator and also made some friends at the playground and tried some fishing. They warn you in the park that if you catch a fish and the alligators go for it…let them have it and cut your line. We thankfully did not have any encounters that close with alligators.

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After Brazos Bend we had a couple of chilly, rainy and windy days at Galveston Island State Park. The beach side of the park is closed for renovations and the campsites are not that great, but it gave us a chance to catch up on homework.