From our vacation to the Gulf Coast of Alabama earlier this year. This is an inland scene in a bay near Orange Beach. We had a great time and I took lots of photos.
This book themed sculpture is outside one of our local Tulsa libraries. I love all things books.
And an action cam photo from one of my bike rides here in town. I love this old natural gas powered electric generating station. The sign on top is neon and looks great from the other side of the Arkansas River. The camera mounts on my handlebars and takes a photo every three seconds. I don’t keep all of them. Typically I have about 1500 photos of which ten to twenty are ones I want to keep. I can do the winnowing quickly, typically in about ten to 15 minutes.
Not AI – I used Dynamic Auto Painter to modify a photograph.
The thing about a beach vacation is the beach and the water. Here is a scene from our condo balcony on the fifth floor with the gentle morning waves of the Gulf of Mexico rolling up on the beach. So we’d watch the Gulf from our condo with our morning coffee, breakfast, and newspapers. Then later we’d go hang out on the beach and then we would do a walk on the beach. Then we would go out and about town and return to beach in the late afternoon and then when it got dark we were back out on the balcony watching the Gulf some more. It was heaven.
This past couple of weeks, I have been hanging out at the beach in Orange Beach, Alabama. We love it there. I spent a lot of time sitting there letting the sun do its best to kill me with its death rays, while wondering about all the people that are part of the beach. The Beach Warriors. It’s a whole army of people.
Early in the morning, the fishing dads come down from their condos. Other dad’s bring out coolers, chairs, and shelters, set them up and the families don’t show up for hours.
The guys and gals that set the beach service up are out early as well. Talk about a job from hell, drag all that stuff out, set it up and sell only about 30% of the setups max. You can take photos for free though.
Most people bring their own chairs and such.
And you have the energetic beach runners. I used to do that some years ago when I still ran. Beach running is hard except for young people who just seem to glide along.
And the energetic youngsters running around like kids have done for thousands of years at the beach.
And then photo’s at the beach. This was a family directed event. The professional photographers work fast. Time is money you know. I loved this family they took all the different arrangements of people you can image. Youngsters, oldsters, moms and dads. They took their time.
And the beach kayakers. Lots of fun but the amount of energy spent per unit of fun was high. This guy was actually surfing his kayak in.
Stand up paddleboarding has a chill vibe. Lots lower energy per unit of fun. You have to have good balance!! With both kayaking and paddleboards you have the problem of hauling your watercraft across the beach to the water.
There was an Amish presence on the beach this year. During the day they all sit together and talk and visit. Nobody taking instagram selfies or anything like that. This evening they all turned their chairs around and watched the men play a version of baseball. Fun for everyone!
A catamaran came by at least once daily. Part of a dolphin tour just offshore. We’ve seen lots of dolphins go from west to east about ten in the morning and back late in the late afternoon. It’s one of those things where it is a lot more fun to watch with your eyes instead of trying to photograph or video.
The Alabama Highway Patrol cruised by once or twice checking everything out.
The beach patrol came by also checking to make sure we are safe, nobody is using glass, and your shelters are behind the designated line. Also, they have a final cleanup on the beach about 10 or 11. If you leave chairs or anything behind, they confiscate and dispose of them.
This is just a sampling of the Beach Warriors you come across on a beach.
We are having our family vacation in Alabama’s Gulf Coast. We love the beach and the Gulf of Mexico. This is a shot on Wolf Bay at Orange Beach. So I am on “minimal blogging mode.” I’m taking lots of photos to generate “content” as the youngsters say. The Skywatch Friday pages are already made and will come up as normal this week and next.
We went on our family vacation to Orange Beach, Alabama early in September. It was great because the crowds were gone and the weather was pleasant, but the water was still warm. It was perfect.
I spotted a squadron of pelicans skimming the waves in the Gulf of Mexico. I presume they were looking for something to eat.
We saw this lone wolf pelican at a nearby pass begging for food from the fishermen. We see these loners and I sense that most of them are juveniles and don’t quite know how to fend for themselves.
And near the pelican were some great blue herons. (At least I think that is what they are.)
I was on the balcony of our condo when I spotted this heron. I am thinking that he was looking for lizards.
We walked on the beach a lot. We saw lots of shorebirds standing and flying around.
Had a bunch of these birds
On a bicycle ride in nearby Gulf State Park we saw this alligator. We have been here before and there is almost always an alligator or two here.
And at the swimming pool one evening we spotted this lizard. He would puff his throat up to a bright red color. He’s lucky a heron didn’t see him is what I think.
Bridge across the Mississippi on the very long drive to the beach, 13 hours or so.
Mississippi State Forestry Service fire tower. I don’t think they use it any longer.
At Orange Beach, we found this treasure dredging sand at Perdido Pass and making more beach by pumping the dredged material ashore. This is as close as they let us go. Isn’t it beauty. I used to use similar barges laying pipelines in south Louisiana.
Isn’t she a beauty?
I got a few decent beach skies.
Lots of pelicans skimming the waves.
We had several decent days on the beach. The water was way too cold for me. My feet got toasted good in the sun. I promise, no more feet pics. At least for a while.
I got up early one fridged morning and got a decent sunrise. Yes, I used a filter if you must know.
We saw a catamaran out on the water one late afternoon. Nothing better than photographs of sailing vessels I think.
We drove to nearby Pensacola and checked out Pensacola Beach. Gorgeous beach and water. We got out on the pier and saw fisherman catch fish. We saw a sea turtle surface briefly and sharks lurking about. Lots of manta rays. I didn’t have the right camera to capture any of that.
Back at Perdido Pass. We have learned that dolphin cruises and fine and good but the fisherman on the beach will tell you where to go see dolphins. We got to the pass late afternoon and there were tons of dolphins going back and forth. Didn’t have to pay a thing and nobody presented us with a tip jar.
I’m fascinated by Artifical Intelligence generated photos. I got on my goto site for that kind of foolishness, freeimagegenerator.com, and entered: “most colorful orange beach alabama skywatch photo hdr realistic detailed concept art ” on the text prompt and a few seconds later it gave me this image. Strangely enough it looks like about half the shirts for sale in the state. The whole concept is freaky to me. Try the link and let me know what you think. You want to try something really disturbing, enter your name and home address in the text prompt.
That’s about all the foolishness for this week. I’m linking to Skywatch Friday.
We are still at the beach on our family’s vacation. We had a couple of warm days to wear we could sit on the beach for a few hours. The water was warm enough wade in but not for me to get in. Son got in for a little bit but he is young, right? And then it got cold so we go beach walking and hiking in a nearby State Park. Hey you know, a cold day at the beach is still okay.
I hope everybody is doing well!! I’m linking withSkywatch Friday.
From our recent vacation. Shadows from a fence protecting the dunes.
And Heather and I during one of our walks. We walked on the beach barefoot twenty five miles total. I kind of miss it. I love how skinny I am in this photo, and tall!!
We are down in Orange Beach, Alabama on vacation. The weather has been okay. Sunny, Cloudy, Rainy. Today it is kind of stormy. I guess that it is related to Tropical Storm Nicholas which isn’t here yet.
I woke up this early this morning, put my wide angle lens on the ole Nikon and started to go outside but then it started to rain. I’m kind of protective of the ole Nikon so I used the iphone.
So the wind is blowing and it is raining and we got a flash flood watch so it is going to be a reading day for us. The condo has an exercise room with dreadmills and such but I doubt I’ll do that. We have been walking on the beach two or three miles a day and we’ll see if that happens.
This and the next couple pics and videos are from yesterday’s beach walk. I just love walking in the surf. Didn’t get to do that much growing up in the intermountain west. Don’t get to do it too much in Oklahoma either.
So I make the most of it here.
I don’t mind bad weather. The thing that drives me inside is lightning. I personally know somebody who died from a lightning strike.
Here is a shot from when we first got here. The sun was out and the water was clear. We could see dozens of squadrons of cow nose rays. Check the link for more information. I had never heard of them before but they are graceful swimmers. They look like butterflies of the sea even though they are about two or three feet wide. They swim with their mouths wide open hoovering anything in their path. They swam around people. Check the link above for more information.
Who knows what the day holds for us. We might walk to the beach bar next door and drink a couple of bushwhackers and listen to live music.
Heather and I are on vacation this week. We are down in Orange Beach on the Alabama Gulf Coast. It’s our happy place.
Here’s my bride during our bicycling adventure at Gulf State Park. We rode 16 miles and it was great. Hardly any other people and some great trails.
It has three really nice lakes with marshes and it is incredibly gorgeous.
It’s also a great alligator habitat. We saw this momma and two babies chilling out by the trail. There are also “several” types of venomous snakes according to Park. Two years ago I went geocaching at the park while wife and son went parasailing. I had a great time but my head was on a swivel looking around.
We are right next to a beach bar. No bull, they had a rodeo last weekend. The condo was full of cowboys. They are the most polite people you will ever meet. They also like to party hard.
Saturday the beach was hopping between the cowboys with their hats on in the water and a bunch of happy, good natured people celebrating their football teams, LSU and Alabama seemed to be the most popular and playing incredibly loud tunes on their speakers that they actually rolled out across the beach on wheels. They also were celebrating their favorite presidential candidate.
Sunday, we basically had the place to ourselves. The cowboys went on to their next rodeo and the partiers went back to work and school.
