The Hanson's Happy Life!: Family Fun in Gulf Shores!

This past weekend we spent time with Kevin’s family at the beach in Gulf Shores, AL. The vacation was packed full of exciting adventures and great memories! On Saturday, we drove down to Gulf Shores and met Kevin’s family at the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo called “The Little Zoo That Could.” We spent our time walking around looking at all of the animals - Alligators, Goats, Monkeys, Tigers, Lions, Kangaroos, Snakes, Lizards, Spiders, Parrots, etc. We even got to feed and play with the Lemurs!

After the zoo, we went to the beachside condo and unpacked. The view from the balcony was beautiful; we could see both the beach and the bay on either side of us. After we freshened up, we got ready to go eat at Lambert’s Famous Restaurant. We ended up waiting for over 2 hours but it was worth the wait! Lambert’s is the only home of “Throwed Rolls” and literally they throw huge yeast rolls at you from across the room. They also offered “pass arounds” at no extra charge. These "extras" were brought to us by servers carrying pots of fried okra, fried potatoes, macaroni and tomatoes, black eyed peas, and sorghum and honey – all you can eat. We were stuffed when we left the restaurant but the wait was totally worth it. I wish there was one closer to us because I would definitely go again!

After dinner, Kevin, Taylor and I decided we wanted to ride go carts (well they decided that, I went along for the ride – no pun intended:) The track went in circles and consisted of sharp turns and hills, I of course was the slowest on the track (I know, that's not a surprise) and felt the wind blow thru my hair as people zoomed by me. As I was going around the last corner, I saw that Kevin was completely flipped around and stuck…..I passed him with a big smile on my face, but all of a sudden he raced up beside me and went ahead to finish before me, leaving me to finish last (again, not a surprise). We had so much fun and laughed about it the whole way home.

When we got back to the condo later that night, we decided to go crab hunting. This was my first experience “crab hunting”. We got a flash light and all went down to the beach to see if we could find anything. There were a ton of people doing the same thing but no one seemed to be having any luck. The reason people look for crabs at night is because the crabs come closer to the shore to feed and end up getting washed up with the tide. After crab hunting, we watched some TV and then headed off to bed.

On Sunday, we got up early and went down to the beach so that we could get a good spot. Majority of the morning was spent laying out and swimming in the ocean. After lunch, we got ready to go on a Dolphin Site Seeing Tour in Orange Beach. The Dolphin cruise was so much fun, we saw lots of Dolphins and even got to watch them play with the boat we were on by jumping in our wake. They are such playful animals and seemed to be having a blast. Later that night, we went to a local restaurant to get some good seafood and then went to get TCBY for dessert. Once we got home, we were so tired we all crashed. The next morning we headed back home, we were sad to leave but had a great trip with family!

Before the Dolphin Tour!