Monday, August 19, 2013

Day 3 of our Gulf Shores, Alabama Family Vacation

If you missed the previous days of our Gulf Shores vacation, you can check out day one here and day two here.


Monday was our third day and we spent a majority of the day hanging out at the condo, pool and beach. 


Every morning at around 10 o'clock, the blue angels would fly along the coastline. Jackson, had a love/hate relationship with them. He loved seeing them fly by, but he hated the loud noise they made.

While sitting out on the balcony this day, I got a few pictures of some of the beach houses for rent across the courtyard. They are pretty cool to see. 




Later that evening we headed to Orange Beach to take a Sunset Dolphin Cruise. This was the one activity I was looking the most forward to. I just love dolphins! They are so playful and fun, and oh so cute!

We were instructed to get there around 30 minutes early, which isn't always fun when you have to try and entertain a toddler around water. But we did our best. 


While we were waiting on the dock, we spotted this guy. So cool, I had to get a picture!

I was so excited about this being Jackson's first boat ride. He, on the other hand, wasn't all that impressed. I think he liked it at first, but then got a little bored. He did pretty well for the most part though.



The way this dolphin cruise works is that 2 boats go out. Both boats go in different directions searching for dolphins. When one boat spots them, the other boat will join them and they will take off together, creating a wave in between the back of the 2 boats. The dolphins love it and jump and play in the wave. They call it "surfing the dolphins". It was great! We were out in the bay for about an hour and a half and we surfed dolphins around 5 times! We saw lots of dolphins!

Here's a picture of the other boat, heading out with us. 

Spotting a dolphin!

Surfing dolphins.



When we weren't surfing any dolphins, the boat was moving fairly slow because they were searching for them. This was when Jackson got bored. So Jake took him up on the top of the boat so he could see the water better.

More dolphins!

They had a little well on the boat for the kids to catch fish. So Jake helped Jackson catch a few. :-)

 My parents with Jackson on the dolphin cruise.

 We were on the sunset cruise, so I snapped a picture of the pretty sunset. :-)

After our cruise. We had dinner at a restaurant called Tacky Jacks


See all the tape with writing all over it on the pillars? That's why they call it Tacky Jack's. You write your name and a message on there and leave it taped to something in the restaurant. Unfortunately, we forgot to do this, but it was pretty cool.



And that was the end of another great day in Gulf Shores! :-)