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Mobile (Alabama), Destin (Florida), and New Orleans (Louisiana), United States of America (14 - 24 November 2012)

One of Kristina's best mates from her college years was getting married and Kristina was in the wedding - as good of a reason as any to make another random trip out of it! Haleigh grew up in south Alabama (just up the street from Benjamin Buford Blue - people call him "Bubba"), and given her folks were paying for the wedding that's where it was held. Kristina's aunt lives within driving distance of there in northwest Florida so we threw that into the mix, and New Orleans is a major destination in the area so we threw that in there too. Add to that it was Thanksgiving the following week (a time for families to get together and stuff themselves full of food) so it was back to Kristina's home city of San Antonio in Texas. Gotta love a good random trip!

Sweet home Alabama indeed! We flew into the city of Mobile (pronounced 'moh-beel' for some unknown reason) around which we'd be based for the next few days.		Just down the road a ways is none other than Bayou La Batre - the home of Forrest Gump's buddy Bubba (who knew everything there was to know about the shrimping business hehe). We took a drive through there and sure enough - shrimping boats absolutely everywhere! It's a fierce and highly-competitive business in this neck of the woods.		Enjoying the southern life (slightly slower than the New York life).

That's Haleigh on the left (the bride to be), not really as short as she looks next to Kristina's six-foot frame (Kristina was standing slightly up-hill hehe).		As for Mobile, we didn't have time to see much of it other than just passing through. We did get to see its tallest building however which is also the tallest in Alabama State - brilliant.		We also called into the Battleship Memorial Park, a military history park and museum with a collection of notable aircraft and museum ships (including the massive USS Alabama seen behind Haleigh and Kristina).

Some 30'ish minutes outside of Mobile is Grand Bay where Haleigh grew up. These three photos pretty much sum it up ;) Well not really - about 3,000 other 'Bamans call it home also. Up the street in Bayou La Batre it's all about the shrimp, and here it's all about the pecan. Much of the rural land around Grand Bay is planted in pecan trees, and pecan production is important business here. I'm more of a shrimp man myself. I mean you can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There's shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich... That's, that's about it.

As a quick side-trip while the other girls in the wedding party were off doing whatever it was they were doing, Kristina and I jumped in the car with Haleigh's dad, crossed over this huge-ass area of water, and headed out to Dauphin Island.

This small barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico is home to around 1,500 - all of their homes raised due to the flooding risk (think Hurricane Katrina for example - much more on the later). Way off-shore can be seen the other big industry in the area - oil rigging. And just like the shrimping boats, they're everywhere!
That night we headed back into Mobile to this bloody nice property for a party, put on for Haleigh by the swim team she grew up swimming with.
I mentioned this ages ago but I was going to be doing a lot of photography around the wedding as part of a time-lapse video I want to put together (similar to what I did here). So this was all good practise for me, primarily getting to grips with my flash which is a whole other area of photography-related 'fun'.
Good times, good times.
The next day we left Mobile and Grand Bay for the cute little city of Fairhope where the wedding party was based. These were shot from my hotel room balcony overlooking the main drag. We made two vital discoveries while we were here: a good bar just round the corner, and an awesome pizza joint just up the street for after you've stumbled out of the bar with the munchies.

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