Mobile – 2 Chicks, 50 States

Our time in Alabama got off to a great culinary start with two smashing meals. Dinner the first night was some of the best sushi we’ve ever eaten at a bar called The OK Bicycle Shop. This was followed by our first Cajun steamed crawfish the next day for lunch at Mudbugs At The Loop.

Bracing an Arctic windstorm hitting Mobile, we visited USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. The Park is home to the USS Alabama, nicknamed the “MIghty A”, a battleship which served the nation through World War II and was awarded nine Battle Stars for her meritorious service. Home to 2500 crew members at sea, the USS Alabama measures 680ft/207m and weighs in at 42,500 tons when fully loaded. Today this retired warship is open to hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

One of four propellers used to move the ship at 28 knots/32 miles an hour

Two of the three triple-gun turrets on the battleship. The turrets can hurl 24,300 pounds of steel at the enemy every 30 seconds to a range of 21mi/33.7km.

Flag Plot, the tactical and navigational centre of the ship, was the Admiral’s combat intelligence gathering office

The enormous bread dough mixer in the ship’s bakery

Battleship Memorial Park is also the resting place of World War II submarine, the Gato-Class USS Drum, as well as a wide array of aircraft, tanks and artillery.

The USS Drum, which I could not get entirely in a single photo, held up to 83 men at extremely close, warm and humid quarters

The Douglas C-47D Skytrain was the workhorse of the Allied supply lines during WW2

The Grumman A6 Intruder was introduced in 1963 to attack both ground and sea targets, day or night, in any weather

The Alabama Korean War Memorial is one of several memorials on the grounds of Battleship Memorial Park

From the seriousness of battleships to the frivolity of Mardi Gras. Which, it turns out, is not such a frivolous business at all. Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is a festival that traditionally starts 40 days before Easter and finishes on the last day before Lent commences. Mobile is the original host of Mardi Gras which originated here in 1703 when Mobile was a French colony (before New Orleans was even founded). Our visit to the Mobile Carnival Museum showed us how seriously the city takes its Mardi Gras duties. Not just an opportunity for extravagant parades with elaborate floats, Mardi Gras in Mobile is full of pomp and pageantry and is sponsored by a network of mystic societies made up of secret members. Kings and queens of Mardi Gras are elected by these mystic societies and the money spent on coronation trains, crowns and scepters fit for royalty is astounding. Parades, dinners, balls, costumes with masks and endless parties make for dazzling Carnival seasons for the people of Mobile.

This cat was part of a float and is covered in tinfoil cupcake liners

Bernadine the Dragon belongs to a mystic society of Mobile

The trains are elaborate displays of embroidery, furs, sequins, beading and stitching

Trains are worn by both the kings and queens of the season

The bigger and brighter the headdress, the better

Off to Florida now! We will be leaving Ruby with our friends in St Augustine while we fly to Manhattan to have Christmas in the Big Apple. We’ll be back in St Augustine for New Year’s before we head off to explore the rest of Florida.

Thank you to everyone who has followed us on this amazing journey so far and we look forward to completing it in 2020. We wish our friends and family all over the world a very merry Christmas. May it be filled with love and happy memories 😊😊😊

P&S