Beach Thanksgiving

We spent part of Thanksgiving Day in Mobile; downtown was just absolutely deserted. We dropped by the A-frame Whataburger — there aren’t too many of this design left any more. As of right now, there are ~850 locations, and only a very small percentage of those — a dozen or so? — are still the A-frame. Even the original in Odessa has been updated to a new look. This is the latest concept.

Government Street UMC:

Besides downtown, we went out to Ahavas Chesed cemetery, where we have family. One monument from another family made me just spontaneously burst into tears. So sad and romantic at the same time:

Tell Ruth I Love Her

WMOB

Then, to walk downtown Fairhope, which was decorated so pretty, and kitty showed us around

Fairhope’s indie bookshop, Page & Palette

Winston Groom’s plaque

Other shops had their window displays up for the holidays and next year I’m taking allllll the inspiration from this look for Chanukah wrapping when we’ll hopefully have just a ton of friends over

After we’d walked all of downtown Fairhope, we were off to a roadside stand with satsumas and kumquats, handily sorted by sour and sweet

haaaa even the sweet ones were just crazy sour

In Pensacola, we got a cooler full of fish/seafood from Joe Patti’s, and McGuire’s was set up outside to hand out takeout orders.

We weren’t quite ready to come home, so the day before, I used more Hilton points to reserve a balcony room at the Hampton Inn in Ft Walton Beach

Well, we’d already had a great beach time in Orange Beach, so I wasn’t too concerned about the balcony view at this hotel since it was just going to be one night and I chiefly wanted a balcony so I could leave a door to the outside open for an hour to give the room good fresh air circulation.

When the room description noted that the balcony view was essentially no view, there was truth in advertising 😂😂😂

This Hampton (above, squatty, in the middle) was positively dinky but we didn’t care — it felt free (since I was using points), we’d already had a great balcony at the previous hotel, and we were there to be outside the room anyway, on the beach. It was fine.