Another Gulf Coast trip

My family wanting another trip to the beaches of the Gulf Coast.  Last October, we visited Panama City Beach, FL.  This go around, we went to Orange Beach, AL.  Overall, I was not very impressed with Orange Beach, but due to funds, we were not able to obtain a hotel or condo on or very hear the water and instead, we found a condo a little less than a mile from a public beach.  While the house was very nice and quiet neighborhood, traffic was heavy at the nearby Wal-Mart and the public beach was not much to write home about.

We drove overnight and didn't stop at any caches along with way.  I am not very fond of night caching and beside my entourage was two vehicles and I was the only competative cacher onboard.  After entering Alabama on Highway 45, we stayed in a downpour all the way to the Orange Beach area.

I was mostly excluded from the planning process of this trip and therefore my cache plotting centered around where we would be staying and route to and from.  I picked Highway 45 over I-65 for a couple of reasons.  I knew that I-65 would be full of trucks which causes anxiety among the passangers in my vehicle.  I was also somewhat aware of Highway 45 since I've taken that route a couple of times going back and forth from Camp Shelby, MS on Army National Guard convoys.  Thankfully, the route was good with very limited construction and very few large trucks.

While in the area we did visit the beaches and finding that Gulf Shores is a better location than Orange Beach, the public beach was one of the best I've seen.

On the return trip we visited the USS Alabama Memorial Park in Mobile, AL and Elvis Presley's birthplace in Tupalo, MS.

Some of the notable caches we completed:

Oldest cache in Mississippi:  Bonita Lakes .  I know have my signature on the oldest caches in Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.

A virtual at the US Navy Aviation museum.

Virtual at Fort Barrancas

Cache near the USS Alabama

A cache that leads up to the birthplace and childhood home of Elvis Presley.