- 30.2 miles
- 3 hours 49 minutes
- 7.9 mph average speed
- 1-7 mph winds
Shortly after we had docked at the marina, Kevin flew to Atlanta for the weekend in order to bring his car back to Gulf Shores. We will be here for a week and then will have the boat pulled out to have some work done. We will drive home and come back after the holidays to finish our Loop and cross our wake! It is hard to believe it has almost been a year that we have been living on the boat!
Our friends Kay and Don from Neverland invited us to docktails at The Wharf Marina which is just a few miles from the marina where we are staying. There were several couples there and we all had a great time! We had met one of the couples back in February in Marathon and never met up with them again until now. They had just crossed their wake the day before and there was another couple who were just starting their Loop the next day!
The Wharf is a huge complex with a lot of condos, restaurants and shopping in addition to a beautiful marina. When we arrived, one of the parking areas was filled with kids “trunk or treating” and by the time we left a few hours later it had turned into quite a block party.
We drove to Mobile each of the next three days for some sightseeing.
The Bragg-Mitchell House, built in 1855, is a 13,000 square foot Antebellum mansion surrounded by magnificent live oak trees that are over a century old. Only four families have owned the home since the Bragg family. The last family to own the home was the Mitchell family who purchased the home in 1931 for $20,000. The Mitchells restored the home and lived there until 1965. The Mitchell foundation donated it to the Explore Center in the late 1970’s. Photographs were not allowed to be taken of the interior which was beautifully decorated.
We toured the History Museum of Mobile which is located in the 1857 Old City Hall building. In addition to learning about the history of Mobile, we saw quite an impressive collection of miniature houses built by a man named Aaron Friedman. Friedman and his wife had four sons who fathered eleven grandchildren, including eight granddaughters. After Friedman retired, he built eight miniature houses, one for each of his granddaughters and one for his wife (two of the granddaughters were twins so he built a larger house for the two of them). The miniatures are modeled after actual houses and one of them was modeled after a house in Atlanta! The scale of the miniature houses is 1 inch to 1 foot so they are not as “miniature” as one would think. The miniature modeled after the Atlanta home is 6 feet long! Some of the many fascinating features included in the houses are: real Italian marble, hand laid oven-fired tile, needlework rugs, curtains, cushions and bedspreads made by Friedman’s wife and a friend, stucco walls, and hand casted stones made of plaster and sand. Each of the houses features a painting of the granddaughter for whom it was made. Our pictures of the miniatures did not turn out great due to the glare from the lights and the sun shinning through the windows but they can be viewed online.
Getting to and from Mobile from the eastern shore of Mobile Bay requires either taking a ferry or via an underwater tunnel which is 40′ below the surface of the bay.
Once we were back at the marina after our first day in Mobile, we noticed that our friends Caroline and Todd from Sunset Dreams had arrived. We met them for a drink at LuLu’s (Jimmy Buffet’s “Crazy Sista”) which is located in front of the marina where we are staying. We first met Caroline and Todd in Key West and have run into them several times since and always enjoy their company!
Back in Mobile the following day, we visited Bellingrath Gardens and the Oakleigh House.
Before discussing the spectacular Bellingragth Gardens, a very brief history of Coca-Cola and its relation to Belingrath: First invented by pharmacist John Pemberton of Columbus, GA in 1885, the drink was called Pemberton’s French Wine and was first sold at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta. Pemberton claimed “it cured morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache and impotence”. In 1887, he sold the formula to another druggist, Asa Candler, who modified the formula. By 1890, Coca-Cola had become America’s most popular soft drink and soon Candler began selling rights to bottle the product on a franchise basis. Walter Belingrath took over ownership of the Mobile Coca-Cola Bottling Company in 1903. He began business with one mule, a wagon, an assistant and a hand-and-foot powered bottling machine. He and his assistant would bottle the Cokes and then drive the wagon around the city selling the drinks to local businesses and later retrieve the bottles, wash them by hand and refill them for the next day’s delivery. Three years later, Bellingrath married his secretary, Bessie Morse. Fast forward to 1948 when the Mobile plant is one of the most successful bottling plants in the country and Bellingrath is inducted into the “Half Million Gallon Club” for his plant having used a half million gallons of syrup in a year’s time. He would be inducted into the “Million Gallon Club” in 1970. In his first year of operation, Bellingrath only used 365 gallons of syrup.
In 1917, Walter purchased a rustic fishing camp on the Fowl River and named it Bellcamp. Bessie later got the idea to turn the Bellcamp into a country estate with beautiful gardens such as she had seen on a trip to England. In April, 1932, the Bellingraths invited the public to visit the gardens that they had created and an astonishing 4,700 people showed up to see the beautiful gardens. The couple decided to open their gardens to the public and charge a small fee to control crowds and cover the upkeep of the gardens. They later built their home on the property in 1935 all the while still welcoming guests to the property. Today the home is filled with all of the original furnishings and collectables just as it was when the Bellingraths lived there.
The Oakleigh House was built in 1833 on 35 acres by a brick mason, dry goods merchant and cotton broker named James Roper.
On our final day in Mobile, we visited the World War II battleship USS Alabama, submarine USS Drum and the Conde Charlotte House.
The Conde Charlotte House was built in the 1820’s with the portico added in the 1840’s. It was originally the courthouse and jail until it was purchased by Jonathan Kirkbride in 1849 to be his family home. Each of the rooms in the house is decorated to depict a distinct portion of Mobile’s History from the 1760’s to the mid-1800’s.
We spent the rest of our week in Gulf Shores relaxing and getting ready for our trip home for the holidays. We will be back in January for the completion of our Loop!