On my seemingly endless vacation, I managed to get away from the mountains for a week and visit the beach.  I hadn't seen my family in a long time, so I went to Orange Beach, Alabama to see where they live.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but I imagined lots of people in wife beaters, eating grits out of the back of a truck.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that Orange Beach is nothing like the stereotype most people have of Alabama.

The beaches are very clean, but there's really no big waves here, so no surfing.  But people do love their boats here.  So I spent time on my parents yacht, which I was terrible at driving.  We also couldn't get in the water much, as the dreaded Portuguese Man-of-War was floating around.

My parents buy houses, then fix them up and resell them.  It's a lot of work, but they do a great job of making these places livable.  I went down and visited their latest home.  This place was just a wooden frame, and they did all the work themselves.

My dad has a lot of tools, so we decided to play with some of them.  I drew a quick new logo, then we repeated it on wood.

Saw's are fun.

We then went to the USS Alabama, a WWII Battleship.  It was pretty impressive, and definitely would have sucked to live on.

After that, I decided we should try and find some things that represented the Dirty South.  So we went to the town of Mobile, best known for its Leprechauns.

While I didn't find any leprechauns, I did manage to visit the Spear Hunting Museum.

The guy painted on the side of the building is the founder, note that his shirt and hat say "Spear Chunker".

Then we found tons of shrimping boats.

I think I'll sell the store and become a shrimp boat captain.  Here's my new boat.

After that we went to Lambert's, home of "throwed rolls".  It was pretty sweet to have your food thrown at you.

The view from my parents home.

Finally it was time to leave, so I flew back to Colorado, and drove straight to Breckenridge (thanks for the continual couch space Jenn).  I did some skiing with Mike B. and shop friends Erik Mehus and Levi Stewart.

Mike getting the grab

Erik

Levi

Sadly, many mountains here closed last weekend, and Breckenridge closes this weekend.  If you're in Colorado, you should definitely come up for the last weekend, I know I'll be there.