Thanksgiving found us in southern Alabama.  Darcy Toth and her husband Roger spend the winter in Orange Beach, AL and invited us to join them for Thanksgiving.  We stayed at the Gulf State Park.  This is a great park with plenty of hiking and biking trails.  There was a small lake right across from our site that offered a nice place to go kayaking.  Bob considered doing some snorkeling, but the signs that warned campers not to feed the alligators made him think twice about that.

It was interesting to find so many “snowbirds” in one spot.  We met people from Michigan, other northern states and Canada, who spend the winter in this campground every year.  There are snowbird clubs that have formed in this area and have events together.

We kayaked, and biked most days.  While the nights were often cool, the days were warm and Bob was able to enjoy swimming in the waves of the Gulf of Mexico on the day after Thanksgiving.  He thought they were “almost” as good as the waves on Lake Michigan!

Before we headed back to Mississippi, the four of us took a trip to Mobile to visit the Bellingrath Gardens.  Many of the plants were past their best times, but the place was decorated with lights for Christmas, and it was fantastic!  We have never seen such a wonderful festival of lights.

Back in Mississippi, we started getting into the Christmas spirit by putting up our Christmas decorations.  When we left Michigan we packed decorations for the various holidays, but didn’t have a plan on what we would do with them.  We took some tent poles and fashioned them into a tripod and hung our outdoor lights on it to make an outdoor tree.  When Katrina, Clarissa and Sierra came out to the campsite, they helped us decorate the inside.  It was a lot of fun for all of us!

We had a great time with Sandra and the girls as they participated in Christmas celebrations.  Katrina and the twins were in the Christmas program at the Baptist Church where they are involved in the youth program.  Katrina was also in the program at the Methodist Church they attend and Sandra sang in the choir for their Christmas Cantata.

We had Sandra and the girls for a Christmas dinner at the trailer and exchanged gifts.  That night Bob, Pat, and Katrina posed as a Wise Man, Shepherd, and Angel in a living Nativity scene. The next day we went Christmas Caroling.  The caroling was fun, but Bob said it didn’t feel right singing carols without snow!

Of course, life intruded on Sunday morning when we found that we had lost electrical power in the trailer and were now working off the 12 volt battery system.  We called around and found a Cameo dealer in Hattiesburg, MS that could work on it that day, so we spent Monday hanging around Hattiesburg while they found what had shorted out and replaced the failed component.  Getting it fixed quickly was important as we had plans to fly back to Michigan to spend the Christmas holidays with our family and friends.  We were happy to get back and set up so we could make our flight to Michigan.

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