The Frizz-inskis' White Trash Thanksgiving



Hey everyone,

I hope you all had a nice enjoyable Thanksgiving, we were sad to be away from all our family and friends, but we did our best to fill that hole with a nice sunny trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama. We had a pretty amazing time, and I would definitely love to go back.

First of all, I have never been to anything even close to resembling a white-sand beach before, but now I can tell you I am a pretty big fan. The weather was around 65-70 degrees during the day, dropping down fairly significantly at night. Not much wind to speak of, which was part of the reason there was almost no shore break. Because things were so calm, one of my favorite things was to wade in up to about 4 or 5 feet, and just sit down and float around in the water, feeling around with my fingers and toes for nice shells to take home to mom.

Of course, a number of times, my floats were interrupted by what most people were referring to as “stingrays,” but I don’t think these were the guys that killed Steve Irwin. In any case, they were some kind of ray, and killer or not, they deserved their space, so I gracefully bounded out of the water every time I saw a school headed in my direction. The first night we were there, something had the rays going crazy (mating season?) so they were much closer to the surface, making their wings look like shark fins by sticking them a little bit out of the water. After a while, they started bounding out of the water, getting about a foot of hangtime, and either belly-flopping or back-flipping back into the water. I was really excited by this, and Adair had to eventually drag me away so we could go get some dinner. I have a few crappy pictures of them, so I will try to post them later…I would post them now, but it just so happens that I am in class at the moment.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, it seemed like the vacation population of Gulf Shores was severely depleted, so we mostly had the town to ourselves. The problem with this was that many of the restaurant employees and owners had left town as well, so a few times we found ourselves struggling to find a place to eat. This was especially true on Thanksgiving itself, when we drove to at least three or four restaurants that were closed, just looking for a nice beach meal. Since neither Adair nor I are crazy about turkey, we figured we would just find a fish ‘n’ chips place for our meal, and we finally found one that was open! The problem was…they were serving a traditional Thanksgiving buffet. We had already sat down when we realized that fact, so we just decided to go for it, and I think we both enjoyed it thoroughly. Over the next few days, the restaurants started to open back up, so we ended up having some really nice gulf seafood meals as well.

Overall that about sums up our trip. Relaxing, reading, a little bit of geocaching, and a lot of eating. Oh, we also hit up a really cool bar called the Flora-Bama (on the border between the two states) made up of a huge patchwork of wood and canvas, which contained about 10 individual bars when we were there, and probably 20+ during the busy season. It gets destroyed about every five years by a hurricane, and they can only serve plastic cups and beer cans, but I would highly recommend it to anyone who makes their way to the area. 

Anyway, as I said we were definitely missing you all, but we will be home before you know it. As Adair keeps reminding me, only 18 more work days until we fly out!

See you soon,
Dane

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