Written by:

David Hosea

Last updated: November 1, 2023

There are two things about Mobile that cater to some of our favorite activities… spending time around the water and eating.  We spent one of our weekend days treating ourselves to both.

USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park

Mobile is home to the USS Alabama (BB-60).  The Alabama is an armored battleship that was commissioned in August 1942.  She is 680 feet long and 108 feet wide.  She weighed in at 42,500 tons and had a cruising speed of 28 knots.  At 15 knots, she had a range of 15,000 miles.  There were up to 2,500 crew members on board.

She has a lot of guns.

• Nine 16 inch guns
• Twenty 5 inch guns
• Forty-eight 40mm guns
• Fifty-two 20 mm guns

The Alabama started her wartime career in the North Atlantic leading lend-lease convoys to Britain and Russia.  She also served in the South Pacific.  She led the US fleet into Tokyo Bay in September 1945.

The Alabama is known as the Mighty A and the Heroine of the Pacific.  In her three years of wartime-service, she won nine Battle Stars for meritorious service. 

We toured the ship, and the interior walkabout took us a few of hours.  We climbed up and down a lot of ladders to see the galleys, state rooms, navigation rooms, powder rooms, and the brig.  Construction kept us from portions of the main deck, but what we saw up close and personal was impressive.

The park’s website has a downloadable pdf of the Alabama’s complete history.  You can get a copy here.

The ship is the main attraction at Battleship Memorial Park, but it is not the only war-time vessel to see.  There are several aircraft on display as well as the submarine USS Drum (SS-228). 

The Drum is currently the oldest American submarine on public display.  She is 311 feet long and just 27 feet wide.  She was crewed by 75 men and 8 officers and was named after a fish, which was typical at the time. 

While resting with the USS Alabama today, the two vessels probably crossed paths only once during WW2.  They were both in the South Pacific being refitted for combat at the island of Majuro in June 1944

The Drum’s insignia may not be recognizable to many of us, but its creator is.  Notice the signature on the image below…

The park’s website has a downloadable pdf of the Drum’s complete history.  You can get a copy here.

Once we saw all we wanted to see at the park, we left to find lunch and a view of the Gulf of Mexico.  We looked for something other than a chain restaurant and found the Pirate’s Bar and Grill on Dauphin Island

The restaurant is on the grounds of the Isle Dauphin Country Club but is open to the public.  We had a quick lunch and headed back to Meaher State Park in Spanish Fort.  Let me tell you why this park is one of our new favorites.

We have stayed in a couple of Alabama State Parks and like them a lot, but the proximity to Mobile, the campground amenities, and the views make Meaher in Spanish Fort, Alabama one of our favorites.

The Campground

We are on a long road trip through the south and wanted to spend a few days in the Mobile area.  This park is just off of I-10 so the location was perfect for us.  It is also on Mobile Bay so we had views of the water, nice breezes, full hookups, and plenty of space.

The park has a boardwalk that winds through a march and is a good place from which to see the bay.  There were lots of birds and we saw a 2-3 foot alligator sunning itself on a little island just a few feet from the walkway.

Our site was paved and level so setup was very easy.  The site had a large concrete pad with a picnic table and charcoal grill.  We had full hookups which made water management easy.

There is lots of room between sites and there was no visual separation from our neighbors, but we felt like we had plenty of privacy.  There were stands of nicely spaced, tall pine trees in the campground.  So, we had trees around us and a bay in front of us.  It just couldn’t get much better.

One of the great things about being able to travel is having some choice in our weather.  For this leg of our trip, we enjoyed mostly sunny skies with highs in the mid to upper 70s and lows in the upper 50s.  There were gentle breezes and no rain.  At home, highs were mostly in the upper 50s to middle 60s with occasional rain.  There were two days in the low 70s before a cold front moved through and kept the high to just 36. 

This was a good place to be.

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