Into Alabama, the TV show Tanked, frisbee dogs and hot air balloons.

      Our next stop was at the Escapees Park in Summerdale Alabama. . We wanted to check out this park since it is a club we belong to. It’s near Gulf Shores. We had been to Gulf Shores about five years ago.  After another 200 miles we crossed into Alabama. Along the way we crossed into the central time zone. That’s 500 miles from our home till we crossed into AL. It’s near Gulf Shores, which we wanted to revisit. We spent a couple of days at Gulf Shores State Park just after Katrina. They were in the process of rebuilding the park. The Escapees park is about 15 miles from Gulf Shores.

     We also visited Gulf Islands National Seashore. The beach has a fine white sand. A nice beach area with a few large pavilions.  The super fine white sand was beautiful. The area we visited was Perdido Key.  You can check out more at their web site, www.ns.gov/guis.   On the way we had a great lunch at Lillian’s. We do recommend this restaurant. We had the pizza buffet. From here we went to Pensacola a little Black Water River State Park. A nice state park with camping.

 

While at Perdido Key we went to the visitors center and were surprise by a beautiful aquarium.  Discovered that the aquarium was built by the crew from the Animal Planets  hit TV show called “Tanked”.  

 

Copied from their brochure

 

      We were tourist for three days. We only planned on spending two days in the area, but there was a hot air balloon festival taking place and we decided to spend another day.  There were forty balloons participating.  We did get to see a beautiful “glow”.  It was worth spending an extra day. 

Setting up, in all 40 balloons

 

Starting to get dark

Impossible to get then all glowing at once.

 We found out about a hot air balloon festival and a balloon glow that evening. So after dinner at “The Shrimp Basket” rated in the top ten restaurants out of 128 listed on Trip Adviser we went to the balloon glow. 
      Before the glow there was a Frisbee dog show. We couldn't miss that. We had seen this show at a shrimp festival at Palm Coast about 4 years earlier. We knew there were border collies featured in the show. We had seen another show put on for the Dollywood employees when we worked there. Since we have a soft spot in our hearts we had to see it again. All the dogs in the show are rescues and all the proceeds from sales go toward rescuing dogs.  See www.k9frisbee.com

Note the Frisbee just ahead of the dog.

Up and over, again the Frisbee is hard to see, but it is just in frot of the dog

Looks just like our beloved blazer. Border collies have that unbelievable stare and concentration.