Everyone knows the problem with vacation. It's Wednesday, isn't there something I was supposed to be doing?
Now that my mission is completed, I can allow that I did go on that much threatened road trip a couple Fridays ago. We drove to Fort Morgan, Alabama, an isolated sliver of sand at the end of a peninsula separating Mobile Bay from the Gulf of Mexico.
I am happy to report that I did not witness anyone pumping high test into a garbage bag. That includes through 400 miles of Alabama. Although I started looking for gas every time the fuel gauge read half a tank, I did not once fail to fill up at the first place I saw.
I understand gas panics are old news. Fox News says Biden has destroyed America over two or three things since that one. Oddly, gas prices were lower in Pikeville when I got back than when I left. I did pay $3.01 in Gulf Shores once, though.
Which one of those is on Uncle Joe?
Fort Morgan is on the western end of Gulf Shores which is west of Orange Beach which is west of Pensacola which is in a different state. Before Pensacola had a naval base, the earthworks and battlements of Fort Morgan had protected the southern flank of the early nation since 1812.
The small fort fell to the British for two days in 1814. That's when congress decided Mobile Bay needed a bigger fort and built much of what still exists today.
The majority of the work, both making the bricks and building the earthworks and fort, was done with slave labor. The government contracted the construction with southern slave owners from 1815 through 1830. Given the conditions, it's remarkable how much of it stands today. It survived two years of Confederate occupation in the Civil War, then a long battle to get it back. It served the U.S. military and protected Mobile Bay until the end of World War II.
To be honest, I knew exactly nothing about Fort Morgan Alabama before I pointed my car in that direction. We went there because we went to Orange Beach once and loved it but wanted something less crowded. And beach houses are reasonable there, great for the kids.
Or so we thought.
You might not believe this, but a little sliver of sand between the fourth largest estuary in the U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico doesn't provide a lot of shelter. It's possible I just spent a week in the windiest place on the continent. It doesn't matter how beautiful the beach and waves are, a constant 35 mile an hour "breeze" and red flag riptide warnings dampen the mood for frolicing in the surf.
I learned so much about the fort because I had five days to do anything other than lay on the beach which is normally my default activity on a road trip beach vacation. It's a miracle those bricks and concrete have survived nearly two hundred years of what I just sat through a week of.
It's not a suntan, it's a windburn.