Ahh. At last, the beach. 
I got a late morning start while my traveling companion went for a run (good for her, more sleep please.) In my 12 year old notes I have the following information: we ate chicken sandwiches at a nearby Hardees for breakfast because they were $.99. There was no hot tea, so I ordered hot water and made tea in the hotel room while eating mangoes and yogurt. From there, we played in the sand and the water. I read short stories by Alabama writers (I no longer remember the book), and got sunburned in the spots I could not reach with sunscreen. It had been a year since my last beach outing, and I felt like the long eventful year (my father’s heart attack and start into early vascular dementia, the demands of a top tier grad school) evaporated into meaninglessness. There was just the sand and water from the Pacific the year before blending with the sand and water of the Gulf Coast.
For dinner, we splurged on a restaurant near Bon Secour, a nearby fishing village. We had the option to buy our fish and bring it in for cooking, but decided we were far too hungry and lazy for that. I ate catfish stuffed with crab and shrimp, a bottomless salad bowl, garlic bread and, at last, lemonade. On the way back, we attempted to visit Bon Secour in the dark, but found only the landmark Catholic church. I took no good photos, but I still remember the mighty trees and the Spanish moss in the starlight. By this point in the trip, the Confederate memorials in Alabama towns had become welcome landmarks for us, their ubiquity–and the uniform, mustachioed model used for the statue–provided us with a certain comfort. We named the soldier Rupert, and he became our third traveler for the remainder of the trip. “Where’s Rupert?” we would ask when uncertain of a new place. Oh, there he is. Excellent. We are not alone. Ironically, the symbol of the South had become our North star.