More Than Enough…..

No matter where we’ve traveled around the US, as we explore in our little RV, we find shopping similarities. Most mid-size/large towns have at least one busy street with strip mall after strip mall. You find grocery stores, mattress stores, Dollar Stores, gas stations, a Target or Walmart etc…..many options that we recognize from our own neighborhood in Milwaukee.

One thing we immediately noticed about Fairhope as we drove to our rental was all the banks. One corner would feature Wells Fargo, SmartBank and First Horizon. Two blocks later we would spot PNC, BB&T, centennial Bank and Hancock Whitney. And continuing on we’d see South State Bank, TBC Coastal Banking and First Horizon. Out of curiosity I went to google to see how many banks were in Fairmont and stopped counting at 19.

So I began to wonder how there could be enough people using all these banks and keeping them afloat? Fairhope has a population of 21,100 so even if I double that to include surrounding neighborhoods there are 42,200 people supporting these institutions….2,200 folks for each bank. And then when I google and find that “the average American has $3,500 in a savings account” (which brings up another worrisome pondering on my part) I again wonder how all these bands can stay in business?

Obviously Fairmont has more than enough banks to service the community…..hmmmmm……

Mystery….

 It’s been awhile since I took a few minutes to put “pen to paper”. We left Milwaukee at the very end of January and fled south in order to miss Wisconsin’s February windchills. We’ve been lucky enough to get away for the past few years and explore different spots. This year we landed on the northeast shore of Mobile Bay in Fairhope, Alabama. We’d driven through this small town in the RV a few years ago and decided it would be a comfortable option.

It has been a good few weeks….most days in the 60’s to upper 70’s ….our kind of winter. We love seeing flowers already in bloom all around town.

We like walking boardwalks through the bayous and near the shore….always sort of expect to spot a dinosaur. (An armadillo and alligators are the closest we’ve come!)

But the beautiful, towering live oak trees are the highlights that intrigue me the most. They can be three, four, five stories high with trucks that must be five or six feet in diameter. They are huge and the branches sprout every which way, some decorated with Spanish moss. Their leaves are small….unlike Midwest oak trees. They all seem to “scream” that they want a kid’s tree fort nestled between their boughs. And we photograph one after another thinking “This must be the biggest one!”

The “mystery” to me is wondering just how these giants remain standing. How deep are the roots? How old is one like this? What a beautiful tree to be part of southern landscapes….one very much appreciated by this Wisconsinite.