I know, I know, we’ve been back from Dauphin Island for a little while, but between Zach’s birthday, and family health, I’ve still been working on editing and uploading my photos! Can you believe it? Seriously… worst blogger ever. I swear!

Anyway, here goes, more of my photos from Dauphin Island.

Sunday was our opportunity to really explore the Island. Each year, we take time to drive around the Island and visit different things. We devote a couple of hours to looking around. We usually go for a drive and explore the streets and see what is up. Sometimes, Jeffrey makes fun faces along the way.

For being such a small island, there is really a lot of great things there, like the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Historic Fort Gaines, the Lighthouse Bakery, and more.

Our first stop was Historic Fort Gaines. We’ve been inside a few times, so we decided to skip the actual fort, which costs money (but is very worth it, especially if you have an interest in history, particularly Civil War era). Instead, we took a peek at the outside of the fort.

Fort Gaines was established in 1821, and is named after Edward Pendleton Gaines. It is best known for it’s role during the Battle of Mobile Bay (during the Civil War). It’s actually been on lists for most endangered historic places, because erosion and hurricanes have put it at risk of disappearing entirely. For now, though, it is an amazing fort worth checking out.

It even still features the original cannons used in the battle!

I snapped this shot of my sister peeking into the tunnels outside of the fort. I felt like this shot seemed very “Tomb Raider” of her.

On that same side of the island is a rocky beach, where the waves kind of splash up against the rocks, and you can really enjoy the view, or maybe even go fishing! (But don’t go swimming– seriously, that side of the island has a bad current!)

It’s also a great place to snap some photos. My brother was great at leaping from rock to rock to catch some shots of the waves. Unfortunately, I was a little less stable on my feet, so I either stayed off of the rocks, or tread very carefully!

After driving up and down the island, exploring, we decided to head back to our condo and go to the beach! I’ll tell you more about our condo experience in another post, but I will let you know that the beach was just about the only usable part of it, so a trip down there was a welcome release from sitting in our condo!

Aside from the night before, this was Zach’s first-ever experience with sand and the beach, so it was sure to be either really amazing, or really awful (you never know with kids).

Luckily, it was a HIT! Zach loved playing on the beach and building sand castles with Carolin!

Zach wasn’t the only one to enjoy the beach, though. Jeffrey and Carolin had a lot of fun, as well. The beach is always a great family fun activity. Jeffrey could easily spend his entire day out there, if he was allowed to.

Jeffrey is a huge fan of anything that involves a board… back home, he loves skateboarding, wakeboarding, and kneeboarding, and on vacation, he is all about the boogie board and skimboard!

When it came time for Zach to get to have some waterplay, he raced to the ocean as fast as he could!

I love these photos of Zach and I on the beach. Even though in some ways, I wish I weren’t in these photos because I feel like they’re not the “perfect” photos of me– I’m not at my goal weight, my hair is windblown, I’m so pale, etc– I feel like they are pictures that Zach will still be able to treasure, regardless, because they’re pictures of us together at the beach.

My favorite series of pictures was just adorable. Jeffrey had decided to dig a hole to catch some crabs. Sometimes, if you dig the hole, the crabs will skitter up with the surf, and get caught in the hole. He started digging, and suddenly, Zach was interested.

He looked at him like, “Hey, Jeffrey! What’re you doing?”

It was at that point that the plastic bag I had brought to protect my camera from sea and sand started blowing down the beach. Jeffrey abandoned his digging to chase after the bag!

What happened next was purely Zach deciding to do what he was going to do… my only involvement was to keep the camera ready.

It was seriously one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen!

Later that evening, Zach got to try out the pool for the first time! We had to venture over to the pool at the condo next door (like I said, I will tell you all about that crazy story soon), but it was worth the walk over there.

It was such a great day on the Island. I honestly can’t wait until we can venture back down there.