Friday, February 14, 2003
Valentine’s Day! After breakfast we drove along Perdido Key to Gulf Shores on the Alabama side where a Volksmarch was scheduled to start at 7 a.m. The seven Alabama walks are offered all at once for each of the 4 days of this event, which allowed us to pick and choose which walks we wanted to do in what order. Never have been here before, we just decided to start with walk number 1 and work our way down the list. A lot of folks were also doing the Volksbike event and the club even had bikes to rent.

The route for the first walk was east along the Bayshore Boulevard and a short stretch of boardwalk before turning north. We had a short nature trail loop thru a wetlands area where I got nice picture of a pelican that was sleeping—he had his beak forward rather than tucked under his wing, but given the size of the beak that sure makes sense. We had a nice stretch on a hiker/biker trail before returning to the start/finish thru some nice residential neighborhoods. We thought it was a nicely laid out trail that used the bike lanes on the side roads, which we thought was safer than just walking on the shoulder.

The Florida walk was back near our campsite and didn’t start until 3 p.m., so after lunch we returned to camp for a nice rest, which gave us energy for the next walk. When we drove to the Florida start/finish we found that on this evening we could only do one walk which turned out to be the year-around walk in the Big Lagoon State Park that we had just done the previous day! We were somewhat disappointed, but it was a nice walk so we signed in to do the walk and drove back to the park. There we found a group of people just starting out on the walk, so we joined up with them for the duration. The Big Lagoon YRE has a smaller and larger loop. The smaller loop leads across the tidal area on a boardwalk and touches on the beach. The larger loop follows the Girl Scout Cookie Trail (what a name!) and roughly parallels the perimeter of the park. The walk was all very sandy and soft, which was nice for our feet but made us feel more tired. The best sections were when the trail was covered with pine needles that kept us from sinking in but still allowed the cushioning effect.

We drove back to the start/finish where they offered a complete dinner for five dollars. So we had a nice bratwurst, potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, and our choice of desserts along with very pleasant company. We chatted with Leroy Wright about his motor home and with the other Volksmarchers about walking experiences. We finally broke off and returned to camp, tired but happy that we had managed to walk two complete Volksmarches (20 kilometers) without anything more than sore muscles. During the night the raccoon came back and batted around our pots a bit but otherwise got nothing, so we scored that as one more (small) victory for us, so we now stand at Raccoons 3, Holts 4.