Our Family Vacation to Dauphin Island: The Beach

Beach houses on Dauphin Island are a lot less expensive than in the surrounding areas (gulf shores, Fort Morgan.)  That was one of the main reasons we chose Dauphin Island for our vacation.  The other big reason though was the desire to get away from everything.  We didn't want to take a vacation that we felt like we had to run and do a million different things.  We didn't want to have to fight through crowds of people.  We didn't want to spend hours everyday in the car tying to get a few blocks down the road.  We wanted a nice, relaxing family vacation.  We wanted to spend time with our children and enjoy our every minute of our time together.  We wanted to sit on the beach for hours, swim, find seashells, and build sand castles.  The beach at Dauphin Island exceeded my expectations for all of these things.  Our beach house was on the Mississippi Sound with the gulf a short walk across the street.  Being on the Sound was perfect for us because the water is shallow and there are not huge waves.  It was a short stroll out the back door and down to the beach.  We took our chairs, umbrellas, and sand toys down in the mornings and brought them up at night.  We were the only people out on the beach for miles!  There were houses on both sides of us, but the two houses on our right were empty and the people in the two houses closest to us on our left went out every morning in their boats and kayaks and were never even on the beach with us.  We swam, and played, and built sand castles for hours every day!  The children caught hermit crabs (which by the way provided quite a bit of entertainment) every day and let them go every night.  We watched birds catching fish and sailboats going by.  It was the most beautiful, peaceful time at the beach we have ever had, and we have been to different beaches (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Texas) many times.

Alex is holding a shark head that washed up on the beach

We took a walk one night and decided to see what the beach was like on the gulf side.  It was much deeper and the waves were rougher.  The older children really liked it, but the little ones (and mom) liked the calmer waters much better.

We didn't spend all of our time on the beach.  We did explore the island including the Estuarium and Historic Fort Gaines ( I wrote separate posts on those two places.)  We had to put Emelia down for naps in the afternoon and even Lily fell asleep several times.  The older children watched movies, did puzzles, played board games, and read books in the afternoons and at night before bed.

Tomorrow's blog post will be about our visit to the Estuarium.