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.