Two Spring Breaks

Drew the college student's Spring Break happened first, and he and some friends stayed at the beach a few days (with loose supervision by Dean, who was repairing wood decking...certainly not spying or anything...but when you've got college students at the beach, somebody needs to keep a bit of an eye, in my opinion), then spent a couple of days in Mobile. To overcome any boredom, I took them downtown to eat and wander around the waterfront. And WHO KNEW we had a waterfront, what with all the industrial-ness and trains and such?! Behold the Austal plant where they make the famous Littoral ship. There are 2 on the other side there.


And here's the corner of the lovely Convention Center, which blocks the view of the river, thus my lack of knowledge of our waterway until I attended an event where they actually let you walk out the back and enjoy the water views. Trust me, watching a huge cargo ship get turned around by tugboats is fascinating stuff!


I believe this is Bienville, who had something to do with the founding Mobile, but as I'm not a native Mobilian, I'm not sure terribly sure about that. Drew did do a little research on all this fascinating port-business, and I believe we're the 9th largest port in the nation, and the largest one handling coal exports.


I didn't get a pic of GulfQuest, which is our new maritime museum, but it was quite lovely inside, though we didn't fork over the $18 per person to tour anything but the gift shop and lobby. Well-appointed gift shop, though!

While we were doing this, Dean was wrapping up repairs at the beach, and as a reward for his supervisory time there, God granted him a full rainbow, from one end...


to the other, and note the double rainbow on this side - amazing!


So then Drew's break was over, and Lucas's started a couple of weeks later. We went to Cabo San Lucas (sorry, Drew!). This is an excellent restaurant named Toro, and if you look just to the right of the lady behind Dean, those lights are a cruise ship heading out. Neat!


I had asked Drew to ask his girlfriend what a good contemporary nail color was, since I'm nail polish-challenged, and she recommended either pink or mint blue, which I'd never heard of, but the lady in CVS had. (Brief aside: did you know that on Saturdays if you shop in the Beauty section, they give you some free goodies like bubble bath, etc., in a nice gift bag?!) These are mint blue toesies in the rocky sand of the Pacific Ocean.


And these are the same toesies at the pool near the swim-up bar - oh, garcon!


This was a wacky piece of art that I would love to recreate in actual fabric. These are tiles in a mosaic pattern to make a dress. I guess you could buy it, but you certainly couldn't wear it.


So we did a little dune-buggying through the desert and out to the ocean, though you had to pay for any pictures with that outfit - boo. Lucas kindly photo-shopped Drew into our ocean pic. This looks like a good Christmas card photo candidate...

And the next day we went zip-lining, though they also made you leave your camera, so the only pics I have are the ride there...


and prior to catching a line.


Now one thing that was cool about Cabo are all the types of cacti there are, so I took some pics of the purple cactus...


the bushy cactus...


and the wormy cactus. Sorry I don't have official names. I did learn from our dune-buggy guide that only one species of cactus has water that's safe to drink. The rest have toxins and what-not, so no drinky!


Something else I learned that was quite devastating is that knitting needles are not allowed on flights from Mexico! WHAT??? Also no nail clippers or tiny scissors....and no golf balls! What are people thinking?!


OH, and so we make it safely back to the US, and we land in Houston to catch our connection to Mobile, and who should walk up but my sewing buddy, Becky! Her family was coming back from a West Coast spring break, and one of Lucas's classmates was also returning from a Grand Canyon spring break. Made the rest of the trip go by much faster.

Next post, I hope to have some pics of my knitted mesh sweater which I finally did get around to working on when I got my needles back, and also a Tough Mudder update, since that's next Saturday - yikes!!! Back to training....