Beach camping: Gulf Shores State Park

As we are about to embark on another camping adventure I wanted to update our little blog with our summer trip before we go!  We went down to Gulf Shores to their State Park to camp for a week at July 4th & boy was it HOT!!  I have stayed here before & we have all been to Gulf Shores before but staying at the park together was a new thing for us.  This park was torn apart by the hurricanes in 2005 & it has yet to really recover.  There is not a lot of shade available at most of the spots, as you can see here we had one little tree near us:

The facilities were clean & really close (across the street) which was nice.  Here was our whole area:

We found this little guy in our beach bag on the first morning...

We got some new lights which looked cool but in the summertime they attracted tons of bugs & mosquitos so we ended up not getting to use them much... but they were pretty!

About the second day there someone 2 spots over from us saw a baby gator up on their spot, right next to them as they ate dinner!  This made us watch Lucy like a hawk!  The brush right behind us obviously had gators in it which might think she was a meal!  I did not like this feature of the park but we didn't see any gators on the trip (thank goodness!)  Here's our sweet Lulu with her bone...

We bought a deep fryer on this trip which turned out to be one of the best appliances we've ever purchased!  We ate like royalty without all of the cost!  Charles is VERY good at frying ;)

What a feast!!

Leah's first airbrushed t-shirt!  She loves it & has worn it quite a bit since the trip too!  She also got a new bicycle on this trip & though she has not yet mastered it, she learned so quickly on the trip!  We are excited she will have it for all our other trips too!

The one thing I really wanted to get while we were down at the beach was also an airbrushed item... a custom license plate!  Shown below, it is on the inside of our camper & covers a hole right as you walk in the door, I think it turned out perfect! (Leah picked out the plate, good job!)

Speaking of Leah, check out the "foam party" she got to do at The Hangout!  There was TONS of foam!!

She said it was weird... felt like nothing, but yet she was surrounded by white!  It was quite a sight for sure!

Of course we spent some time on the beach which felt great!  Here's Charles & Leah catching some waves...

There were also beautiful sunsets every night... 

Overall we had a great trip, though the heat made it hard at times. The state park was an ok experience but until they get more shade trees grown in, I don't think we will be going back... at least not in the middle of summer!

Happy Camping!!