Gulf Shores State Park (by Asher)

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This park is among the nicest we've been to. There's 28 miles of trails there, so we used our scooters a lot. In fact, I don't think that I ever went in the car to go anywhere other than the beach. We just rode our scooters around the park.

The night we got there we went and played at the huge pool.


We found out that there's a nature center here. There's lots of animals, especially reptiles, but there's also some aquatic life and a big brown bat (even though it's only as big as a fist if it's wings are folded in). The reptiles are snakes, a few lizards, turtles, and two baby alligators. There's also a free-range turtle here. Caleb named him Shelly and he likes to inspect shoes. And they have three owls and a red-tailed hawk outside.


Hey, Willow!

This Diamondback Terrapin is one of my favorites



Hi, Shelly!

Peek-a-boo!

I think we went to the Nature Center every day we were there.

The state park is right up against the Gulf of Mexico. We went to the beach a few times while we were here. After the first time, I scootered there every time. At the beach the water was cold but we got used to it. It was also shallow. We would go pretty far out and the water would only be up to our waist. I liked bodyboarding on the waves even though they were small.

One night we went to the beach to try to find crabs. We found a lot of tiny crabs and a few big ones. My favorite crab that I found that night I called Freeze Tag Crab. It stayed perfectly still and I was able to get right up to it. But as soon as I touched it, it "unfroze," so to speak, and bolted for the water.

On the day before we left, we were at the Nature Center for a long time. We each sketched one or more of the animals. The person who was there fed the animals.

After school, we went on a long scooter ride around Lake Shelby. There are three lakes at the state park. From smallest to largest there is Little Lake, Middle Lake, and Lake Shelby. I believe Lake Shelby used to be named something like Big Lake or something like that. As part of the ride, we went to the pier that looked over the ocean. While we were on the pier we got to see a shark in the water! Even cooler than that, though, was seeing the stingrays. Now, I'm not talking about just seeing a few rays in the water. No, we saw hundreds of them in a big fever! (That's actually what a group of stingrays is called.) There were also these little black birds who were not scared of people at all. There were no more notable moments on the rest of the ride.

It's a sad time that we have to leave. I said bye to all the animals at the nature center except for Shelly, who, unfortunately, wasn't there today. I'd love to come back here and, since it's pretty close compared to the rest of the US, maybe we will.
Location: Gulf State Park, 20115 State Park Rd, Gulf Shores, AL 36542, USA

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