I just returned from speaking about Rage and the Republic at the Gulf Shores in Alabama. This was a return trip to the area just across the border from Florida. I was able to show my wife some of my favorite haunts as well as explore some new spots. I wanted to share some photos and experiences as part of our travel blog and encourage readers to consider coming to this spectacular place. I was also able to witness one of the most extraordinary moments in outdoor sports, but more of that later.
I again stayed at the Lodge at the Gulf Shores, which is a wonderful hotel built across from the Gulf Shores Park with money from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which devastated the area. It was the first hotel to receive a “Cat 5” designation, built to withstand a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 160 mph.
It is a great spot right on the beach and near the pier. You will never find a friendlier or more eager staff. They are all very proud of this unique hotel that is designed to not only withstand hurricanes but to minimize the impact on the area.
Leslie and I walked around the park, which has a mix of marshland and beach terrain. You can hike, as we did, or bike.
The white sand beaches are lovely and there is a pier that was rebuilt after my prior visits. At the time, a section of the pier had been destroyed by a hurricane. The pier is teeming with fishermen and it is fun to talk to them about their catches.
However, the highlight of the trip proved to be our witnessing the greatest catch in recent memory. As we talked to fishermen, each expressed frustration that no one had caught a thing all day. Then a five-year-old Harper pulled out a beautiful white fish to the amazement (and perhaps a bit of bemusement) of all the seasoned fishermen. Harper, who hails from Texas with her family, took the prize in stride:
Harper made our trip and will go down as the Gulf Shore legend who pulled in the great white from the Gulf. I hope that the legend only grows with time as a true fish story should.
On our first night, I took Leslie to The Gulf, which is one of my favorite restaurants in the area. Well, “restaurant” may not capture the place. It is a collection of shipping containers on the beach. There is a bar (a tad pricey) and a great kitchen. I had the shrimp tacos, which were awesome, and Leslie loved the Mahi Mahi bowl. The place is full of kids running in every direction and dancing to the music on the beach.
After my speech, we decided to venture inland and see some Alabama small towns. Alabama’s countryside is gorgeous and these towns are fun to simply drive through and chat with the locals.
Driving through the countryside, we suddenly came upon a bizarre collection of land lifeboats along a sleepy country road:
At the suggestion of our new Alabama friends, we visited Fairhope, a lovely small town of 22,000 with great shops and restaurants down the main street. There is a great museum and a pier to visit.
We then went to Magnolia Springs, Alabama and had lunch at Jesse’s. This is a true gem and worth the drive. It is housed in historic buildings, including the Moore Bros Store built in 1922 and the old post office building. It is named after Jesse King, who was the popular shopkeeper at Moore Bros for over sixty years.
The food and ambiance is a delight. It is located on a street lined with giant live oaks and near the river. We had Jesse’s fried green tomatoes, which were out of this world, as well as Jesse’s barbecue shrimp as appetizers. I had the Shrimp and Grits, which were out of this world. The restaurant is known for its steaks, so Leslie ordered the steak salad and loved it.
It is impossible not to love this quaint, quintessential Southern restaurant. Trust me, it is worth the drive if you are in Gulf Shores (it is about a 50-minute drive through the countryside).
We walked around Magnolia Springs and took in the grand homes and tree-lined streets (this is rumored to be one of the only postal zones where mail is delivered entirely by boat).
On our last night, I took Leslie to my favorite local bar, the famous Flora-Bama. It is a must if you are anywhere near the Gulf Shores. You start by being checked by a guy with a magnetic wand to relieve you of knives and guns. Inside, if you have a death wish, you can order “The Bushwhacker,” a frozen drink with three shots including ice, rum, spiced rum, Kahlúa, amaretto, crème de cacao, vanilla ice cream, and milk.
The bar is a labyrinth of stages covered in the flotsam and jetsam not just from the coast but the wild beach music scene. This includes ceilings decorated with hundreds of bras.
The music on the various stages are locals who play for tips and Bushwhackers. It is not to be missed.
Once a year, they hold the mullet toss. The name brings out images of the famed haircut, but it is also a fish. Contestants on the beach throw a mullet from a 10-foot circle in Florida across the state line into Alabama. The winner throws the fish the farthest into Alabama.
As you can probably tell, we had a ball on the Gulf Shore. This is a unique part of our country that has to be experienced firsthand. So get yourself to the Gulf Shore. You can get bronzed on the beach and bushwhacked at the Flora-Bama. Or you can simply enjoy the Gulf breezes, fresh seafood, and good country music.
Live oaks and spanish moss? I’ve seen similar, me thinks, in Floral City, FL. Cool!
It’s hard not to like you, Professor Turley. Not that I’ve tried, just saying…
Thanks for the wonderful tour.
Thank you for sharing your photos and your stories. All of my family’s roots are in the Southern states…..and in Alabama, Monroeville . (Harper Lee and Truman Capote).
Next time be sure to drive up to Mobile and experience the 90 yr old original Oyster House called Wintzell’s. Deelish! ((or used to be!) The last time I was there, many years ago, Mr. Wintzell was still going table to table, talking with the customers.
And by the way, Professor, you have always reminded me of a true Southern gent!………except, of course, for that funny accent of yours 🙂
Locals used to refer to the Baldwin County area as L.A. (Lower Alabama). When I attended a Jesuit college on the Gulf Coast at the age of 17, I was regularly reminded that I spoke funny. At least I can conjugate my verbs, I would tell them. Their reply: “what does conjugate mean?” True story.
I thought I knew America until I arrived in the Deep South along the Gulf Coast. With every put down and racist comment made by Southerners (e.g. you’re the most adorable sριc I have ever met, I reminded myself these folks had a certain charm about them if not for their ignorance. Gulf Shores was our college freshmen orientation destination to show freshmen what a beach looked like. I refused to get off of the bus. That isn’t a beach, it looks like a wide canal with shallow, murky water, I told the orientation coordinator. I was inconsolable and insufferable, but adorable, so I was told.
In time I got to know all points between Pensacola, FL and New Orleans, LA via Scenic US Highway 90. I learned that Mississippi has their own beach towns. College friends took jobs on oil drilling platforms in the Gulf. I took a job one summer at a McDonalds in Pass Christian, MS, where I stayed with my college girlfriend in her grandparents beach home. The seafood was divine. The natural scenery was jaw dropping. The people were WYSIWYG, which was refreshing. New Orleans was celebrated as the epicenter of Mardi Gras, but in actuality Mardi Gras began in Mobile. Mardi Gras in New Orleans was rather riotous but in Mobile it was more French-Cajun given its roots.
Baldwin County with its Spanish Moss clinging to massive oak tress, was in my eyes the true Deep South. Virginia has nothing on Alabama when it comes to “The South”. I liked Baldwin County so much that I worked one summer in Point Clear, AL where a religiously funded program ran a migrant day care center. The locals did not talk about their Christianity; they lived it. I got to rescue children under age 6 from agricultural fields where their migrant parents picked crops with dangerous farm equipment, placed them on a mini-school bus, took them to Point Clear, and our staff taught them English, math, personal hygiene and play time.
The Gulf Coast is very different than the northern regions of the states to which they belong: New Orleans-Slidell (LA) Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula (MS), Bayou La Batre-Mobile-Baldwin County (AL), are night and day compared to their northern sister cities of Shreveport, Jackson and Birmingham. The Gulf Coast is one of America’s best kept secrets for vacations.
Professor Turley is correct. Folks should visit LA (Lower Alabama). We recently traveled there for my 40th college graduation anniversary. Baldwin County is as beautiful today as I remembered.
Thanks for the memories, JT
Hey Estovir
Thank goodness you weren’t black, why those heathen crackers might have eaten you with an order of fries!
Estovir…I love hearing about your experiences! And you write them so well!
I was raised in a seriously religious Southern Baptist home where racial bigotry of any kind was not acceptable, not tolerated! That was exceptional because my father had a black mammy who had wet-nursed him when he was a baby. She was also HIS daddy’s mammy and wet nursed him.. There was nothing but respect for her…absolutely no n word, only respect and love. I got to meet her when I was a little girl and it was one of the most exciting things that happened to me as a child. I have 2 framed letters that she wrote my grandparents back in the 1940’s. Treasures!
But the one thing my family did have a healthy dose of bigotry for was “yankees”…..and I don’t mean the baseball team.
To her dying day my mother always said the word “yankee” in a hushed tone because she was taught that the actual word was “damnyankee” and she didn’t want people to think she was cursing. 🙂
Cindy, always wonderful to hear from you (and Honestlawermostly).
I have great memories of living in the Deep South. For my sophomore year I got to move into the “Honors Dorm” where the basketball team also lived, different floor. One day I heard their floor playing “Alabama” country-rock music (1983ish), and I had to explore. I liked the tunes but it sounded so….country. Those guys could not get enough of my Cuban accent and interest in country music. So of course they educated me and soon they looked for me in the stairwells or study room in the dorm, and I definitely asked them questions about “country living”. Not surprisingly the BB team had to have a high GPA to stay on the team so they were studious like me.
Till this day when I hear the Alabama country rock group music, which is rare, I think of the good times in the Deep South.
I never visited Monroeville though 🙂
When I was a kid in the 50’s we lived for a year in Biloxi. I loved picking up pecans from the giant trees that were, seemingly, everywhere. Thin shelled and delicious. My lovely old mexican lady grandmother is buried in Gulfport so I need to get back there to visit. I well remember driving through that coast a number of years after Hurricane Camille when the huge old oaks and antebellum mansions were still in ruins from a once in hundreds of years event! Even the highway took a decade to repair from the massive destruction. Looks like, from your photos, that the old gulf coast if pretty much back.
It is a unique and lovely part of this blessed land as are the people. I miss it greatly but maybe not the summer humidity!
Thanks for bringing back old memories.
“Then a five-year-old Harper pulled out a beautiful white fish . . .”
Which also looks a tad bigger than “El Diminuto.”
Thanks for sharing your vacation highlights Mr. Turley.
Here are a few highlights from my most recent vacation that I shared in one of my June blogs. The following is the brief snippet I shared about that vacation…
Oh gawd! Its the look at my pictures on my smartphone stupidity. Steve, no one cares, especially Turely. He doesn’t read the comments.
Go somewhere else to argue with yourself, trolling moron.
Thanks for sharing!!!
Bizarre how even the most serene post, can draw haters.
Thank You for being BRAVE and charting your own path!
That path is well worn… so
I thoroughly enjoyed this Article on the Gulf Shore of Alabama. It seems articles such as this is another of the things we have lost over the years. Don’t get me wrong, I am a retired attorney, and if you want to learn about what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they set pen to paper, the you cannot miss your columns, but this is a welcome holiday for the mind. Thank you
Professor Turley…..You are Da Man!!!
Taking your Missus to Flor-Bama for a night out!
I remember when it first began…back when it was just a nearly falling down shack….with sleeping accommodations amongst the sand dunes and Fiddler Crabs. It was very much the hangout for itinerant Helicopter Pilots on their time off from flying out to the oil rigs. Sometimes we commuted from places like Iran and other Persian Gulf locales courtesy of paid air tickets by our employers.
Not too long ago I had the pleasure of attending that place….and noticed there were folks from multiple generations in attendance with everyone having a good time and enjoying the music, drinks, and pandemonium. I did not sleep amongst the dunes this time however.
I would be interested to find out what made the fish caught by 5 yo Harper especially significant. Prof. Turley didn’t seem to explain that.
Looked like a great family trip. He left out the 100 degrees in the shade, bull sharks, piranha gnats, deer flies and mosquitoes 🤣part.
Welcome to the dirty South!
FYI. There are no sharks and piranha in parks. Welcome to reality!
Really, do tell. We have multiple shark attacks along that stretch of gulf coastline every year. There are some massive tiger sharks aside from the Bulls, black tips, sandy and spinners. Way more sharks in the gulf than the east coast.
A majority of those areas are State and/or local Parks. Sand gnats (for you) and deer flies come every day on the marshy areas early and dusk, especially when the wind she no blow.
We have alligator attacks here every year in the inland Springs, rivers, lakes and estuaries. We’ve already had two or three this year further south, a fatal one in the Ecofina and there was one at Wakulla a few years back, a 10 year old. We have cottonmouths moccasins, pygmy, cane brake, and eastern rattlesnakes, coral snakes and volumes of other non poisonous water snakes.
Now back to reality, did you wake up on the wrong side of your nozzle today or what?
A very interesting part of the country. You are, of course, on the eastern side of Mobile Bay. Know the area and have traveled through there many times in the past. A classmate of mine practiced medicine in Fairhope. And further east you make it to Tallahassee. The drive from Mobile to New Orleans is something else in adventure and eating. Very sorry I have not been there in many years. Just north of Tallahassee in Georgia is where I’m from. Many years we would travel to that area to visit family all around the Georgia, Florida and Alabama area. I10 is set back from the shores but there is a highway basically right on the beach slightly to the west that travels from Biloxi to Gulfport to Bay St Louis- US 90.
Classmate? What century was that GEB?
Why be snarky? BTW, we are only 26 years into the 21st century – so make an educated guess if it matters to you
Why be snarky Karen? Can’t take a joke?
Thomasville or Faceville GEB?
Great deer hunting that area, go there occasionally myself. Good fishing there before the Developers raped it… hurricanes will fix that.
I hope Secretary of Transportation Duffy reads this. He’ll love it. I certainly did.
As residents of Louisiana we’ve spent many a summer vacation on the beaches at Gulf Shores. There are several small, quaint and picturesque towns lining the Gulf Coast. The food and scenery are wonderful. I wish I had known you were coming to the area as I am reading your book right now. It is quite topical for the times we currently find ourselves in. Glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for the tour! We’ll add that area to our “want to go there” list! I just finished reading my copy of “Rage and the Republic” in time for the 4th of July. Wow…. Amazing book, I really admire the research it took to cover that span of time in our history. IHO, every voting citizen should read it!!
Mr Turley.
Thanks a bunch, now I’m hungry (-:
Hungry for what dustoff?
My wife and I ventured to Gulf Shores a few years ago on one of our great American road trips. It’s truly a magnificent place. And, Professor, you’re absolutely right about the Bushwhacker at Flora-Bama! Even for me, a seasoned aficionado of adult libations, it’s quite the concoction!
…holy smokes.. Prof. Turley! ..you sure can write an AMAZING NATGEO QUALITY travelogue…and handle the exquisite panoramic photo journalism, too! I feel like I’ve been there with you! Thank you for the trip… you are spot on about the Beauty and local colour.. may this be preserved forever… God Bless & Protect America!
Never been to that part of the country, thank you for sharing. 🙂
Never been… and likely never will. When’s your sentence up BTW?