Mobile

View Larger Map

To orient ourselves with Mobile, we took a trolley ride around downtown. We then drove to the Museum of Art. As we left a hall with an excellent temporary collection of works by two local artists, a mother/daughter team of docents asked if we wanted a tour. We never say no to such offers. In what became a one-on-one guided tour, we saw the very good permanent collection and enjoyed commentary from the mother and her daughter, an art history PhD from Tulane. What had drawn us to the museum was the glass exhibit by Richard Jolley and his wife Tommie Rush. Both artists excel at their craft and we enjoyed wonderful installations of their glass work.
We did see a early Chihuly amongst the permanent collection of excellent glass work.

The next morning we headed to Dauphin Island. While it has a permanent population, the island is also a getaway destination with its fish camps, some of which are lovely cream or pastel wood homes of 1500 and more square feet, all up on risers as protection from the hurricanes.

Two forts going back over two hundred years guard the entrance to Mobile Bay. We toured Fort Gaines and learned the story of its capture by Admiral Farragut of the alleged words, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Whether he said those exact words or not, he did defeat the Confederate forces defending the fort and the entrance to Mobile Bay. Those torpedoes were actually mines detonated by contact with a hull or by electricity manually detonated from shore and were used up and down the southern rivers.

We enjoyed lunch at the Lighthouse Bakery on the island and then went in search of gardens. Walter Bellingrath established and expanded the Coca Cola Bottling operations (not the same man who first did the bottling). When doctors told him he needed to cut back from the stress of work, he and his wife moved near Daulphin Island and built a home surrounded by beautiful gardens. The gardens, lake, swamp and conservatory are laid out in keeping with the local ecology but also with European influence.

We went local for dinner to Wintzell’s Oyster House where Jerry had the fried oysters and shrimp and Anna Lee savored the blackened fish floating in a sea of cheese grits.