Historic Blakely State Park

Mobile, AL

Easy to get into this park. Once again, we are the only campers in the equestrian campground - called Carson Campground. $33 per night gets you water & electric hook-up and two covered stalls for the horses.

Our Winegard works fine and Ari’s cell service is solid.

The horses have large covered stalls and appear pretty happy. No round pen or arena for turn out, though.

There is a wash rack to hose down the horses and a decent manure bunker. Hitching posts and a really well built mounting block are also provided.

We rode a short ride on the trails Both horses were rarin’ to go, but my horse was downright amped up. He bucked at least twice and he never bucks. He wasn’t bucking to get me out of the saddle, he was just excited to be out and on the trail. I stuck in the saddle, but I was happy to get back to the campsite. I had Ari continue his ride a little longer to see if he could scope out a longer ride for us tomorrow.

It has been really cold here - temperatures in the 40’s during the day and down into the 30’s at night.

We wanted to explore Mobile, Alabama a little as it was our first time here.

Ari dared me to try and pronounce this guy’s name.

We visited Fort Conde, which is actually a re-creation. The original fort was torn down.

The doorways were quite short. I am 5 ft tall and I was ducking to get through the doorways. People were short in the 1700s.

This exhibit impressed me because it was showing the languages spoken in 1719 in Mobile, AL and they included the Yoruba language - which was used by the slaves. The Creek were the Native Americans n the area. Mobile was a French and a Spanish colony - not at the same time. There were battles where it changed ownership.

This memorial made both Ari and I a little sad. It reads “in Loving Memory, Emilie, 10 yrs old, killed by Indians, rest in peace, mon chere”. Dated 1706.

On our way back to the campsite, we stopped for lunch at The Original Oyster House, which is a bit of a legend in the area. We had a lovely table with a waterfront view. Our server was fabulous.

Outside the restaurant was this oyster shell. I am guessing there are painted oyster shells all over the area.

Walking up to the restaurant.

We stopped for groceries on our way back to camp. You know you are in this area because the grocery stores all have king cakes leading up to Mardi Gras - which is in February. A king cake has a little plastic baby Jesus baked inside. You have a group of friends over and share the cake. Whoever gets the slice with the baby Jesus has to host the next party and provide a new king cake. The joy must be in the fun of seeing who chokes on the plastic doll because I have eaten king cake and it tastes like sawdust.