Bon Secour to Dalphin Island

It’s hard to leave Dauphin Island, in the Mobile Alabama Bay. We arrived there from Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. (Michael jokes it is a refuge for migratory golfers. One of the distressing things is how these areas are so mixed use you have to wonder where the wildlife survive.) We walked a long way out on the beach at Bon Secour, til we were almost to the high rise buildings that rim every wild area on the coast. On the return walk first four jets, pictured here, flew back and forth and around in formation, then two very low-flying navy jets did tricks for us in a rather sinister way. We were the only ones on the beach and they charged back and forth just above us dangerously and ear splinteringly low.
We took a ferry across the Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island just at sunset, the most spectacular sunset of the trip thus far. Dauphin Island was settled by the French back in the 1700s and both Bon Secour (safe refuge!) and Dauphin have civil war forts at their bay points. Dauphin Island has an active estuary research station, lots of deserted homes on stilts, and almost no commerce and was a really nice place (read: ok for dogs on the beach) except for the natural gas platforms that dotted the gulf. We rode our bikes down the beach before going to a wonderful exhibit at the Estuarium and finally, again at sunset, rolled on across the intracoastal waterway.