Turtle Tales: "Singing in the rain, I'm singing in the rain".......

"And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow"... G. Chesterton

We haven't seen the rainbow, but we have certainly seen (and heard) the rain! It began early this morning at 2:30 AM and ended somewhere around 4:30 A.M. There was no wind, for which we are grateful. When we got up, the rain had passed for the time being so after breakfast we proceeded to Bellingrath Gardens, which was our planned activity for the day. We planned on taking Lacy to the Pet Motel they have there, but the lock we had did not work in their run gate. So we decided to go to Dauphin Island to view Fort Gaines and to drive the beach road and view the Sand Island lighthouse which is located in Mobile Bay and can be seen from the shore. We would then pick up a different lock for the kennel and return to Bellingrath Gardens this afternoon. As it turned out, this was a wise decision as shortly after leaving the Fort, the torrential rains began again. And it rained all afternoon. We made it back to the RV park safely, but not without some testing of Jim's driving skills in high water and pounding rain!

So the afternoon was spent reading, going through pictures, correspondences and keeping Lacy calm as she is petrified of thunder. As I write this, the rain has stopped although we can still hear rumblings of thunder in the distance.

The same storms that have been in the area for the last two days are moving towards the Florida panhandle which is our next stop, so we may just stay here for one more day before moving on so we don't have to deal with the extreme weather again. This will allow us the opportunity to visit Bellingrath Gardens tomorrow.

Today's visit to Fort Gaines was interesting. In 1853, Congress named the fortification for General Edmund Pendleton Gaines who had died in 1849. While still a young officer, Gaines received national recognition when he led the detachment which captured former Vice-President Aaron Burr who had been accused of participating in a conspiracy to commit treason. Gaines' men pursued Burr to the vicinity of Fort Stoddert in what is now Washington County, Alabama, just north of Mobile.

Most of the work on the fort was completed by 1861. The outbreak of the Civil War then left the remainder of work to the Confederate States of America. which added the last touches by 1862. The role of Fort Gaines in the Battle of Mobile Bay, one of the war's most notable naval conflicts, was significant.

The United States sold Fort Gaines to the City of Mobile in 1926. The city in turn gave the property to the Alabama Department of Conservation, which deeded it to the Dauphin Island Park and Beach Board. Thus the Fort that took 40 years to construct and was provisioned to withstand any attack from land or sea. at great strategic advantage, became an overnight victim of obsolescence. The technology of armament and the facile display of opposing forces doomed the Renaissance Fort Design.

For more information on Fort Gaines, go to: www.dauphinisland.org/fortgaines

For more information on Dauphin Island, go to www.daupinisland.org and choose your desired prompt.

Todays photos: