Written by:

David Hosea

Last updated: October 21, 2023

This was one of our short stops.  Had we planned far enough in advance, we may have stayed longer, but we had a lead time of only a month or so after deciding to stop.  By the time we started looking, we felt lucky to find a spot with three nights of availability.  We stopped in Gulf Shores more for sentimental reasons than anything else.

As a kid, I have fond memories of a vacation at the Pink Shell, a group of cabins on stilts near the beach.  We stayed there with my mom, siblings, and grandparents just a couple of years after my dad died so, for this twelve-year-old kid, it was a fun distraction and another step toward a life that was getting back to normal.  It was also one of those, “do you remember where you were, when…” moments because it was from Pink Shell #4 that we watched Niel Armstrong set foot on the moon, live and in black and white.

I remember the event in Ft Myers, Florida.  One of my cousins and my sister say it was in Gulf Shores (my sister was four at the time).  For that reason, and maybe others, they have fond memories of Gulf Shores and it was more for their memories and my potential forgotten ones that Heather and I planned the stop.

Where we stayed

Heather and I left for Gulf Shores on a two-hundred-mile trip from New Orleans.  The trip took about four hours with a fuel stop and while the weather-guessers forecast rain along the route, it remained dry.  We had an easy, and uneventful, drive.

Our reservations were at the Gulf State Park because it was less than two miles from the beach, and they had a spot for us.  The park has 496 full hookup sites and a list of amenities that includes bath houses, laundry, bike rental, a nature center, camp store, and hiking and biking trails.  Because the park was so close to the beach, typical tourist activities such as shopping and dining were quick to get to as well. 

We stayed three nights, arriving Thursday afternoon and departing Sunday morning.

What we did

Heather works from the truck when travel falls on a weekday and since our plans called for a Sunday departure, we had a limited amount of time in the area.  But because everything we wanted to do was so close, we had plenty of time to enjoy the beach and dinner on Friday after work and during the day on Saturday.

Friday night’s activities included a stroll along the pier at Gulf State Park.  I read that the pier is the largest fishing pier on the gulf and while it looked big from the parking lot, a long section at the end was still under repair for damage sustained during a hurricane.  So, it didn’t take too long to walk the available length of it. 

As we walked along, we watched fisher-boys and girls, men and women trying to catch anything at all.  We walked by one guy as he was processing a flounder at a cleaning station set up near the entrance to the pier.

We had dinner reservations at 6 pm for Foodcraft, a beach-side restaurant at Gulf State Lodge so between our short walk on the pier and din-din, we stopped in at Bywater Beachside, the bar and grill located on the pier.  Heather and I grabbed a small Yuengling and watched the waves roll in while we talked about the day and ideas for Saturday’s outing.

Foodcraft was a long block away from the pier and we didn’t see an easy way to walk there, so we jumped in the truck, turned right out of the parking lot onto the busy highway, drove a block, and turned right again into the Lodge’s parking lot.

Reservations at Foodcraft are recommended, but apparently not required.  We arrived about twenty minutes early and were seated right away, inside and at a window overlooking the deck and the beach. 

We ordered our cocktails and then started looking at the menu and as expected, I had more choices than Heather.  Heather had steak options to choose from, but she knew that she would order chicken and there was only one option for her.  I planned to order snapper or grouper and while both were on the menu, multiple snapper preparations and shrimp options were available as well.  It made selection more difficult because fresh gulf seafood is not common in the Midwest and found myself thinking, “I’ll take one of those, and one of those, and some of that…” 

Heather selected the honey baked roast chicken and I chose the grouper because it was sauced with a warm lemon vinaigrette and that sounded better to me at the time.

Dinner on the beach overlooking the gulf was a great way to finish a Friday night and we got up on Saturday morning in no particular hurry.  We spent the morning with our pot of coffee and looked at the activity options Gulf Shores had for us, and selected a couple of places to visit.

Heather and I rolled out of the campground at about lunch time and headed directly to the Pink Pony, a beachside bar and grill.  Parking was a bit difficult, but we found a spot a couple blocks away from the restaurant.  The place wasn’t that crowded because it was still a bit early… and possibly because of a crawfish festival going on nearby.  When asked where we wanted to sit, we chose a table on the deck outside and in the shade.

The weather was perfect for a beachside lunch, 82 degrees with gentle winds.  The beach was not too crowded, but there were a good number of folks relaxing on the rentable lounge and umbrella sets along the waterfront.  People were playing in the gulf, and we watched a parasail being pulled by a fast boat about a quarter of a mile out in the gulf and towable banana boat tubes being pulled by jet skis much closer in to shore.  Small, touring helicopters passed in one direction along the water’s edge and a cropduster flew by a couple of times towing a banner going the other.  After lunch, we went for a walk along the beach and stuck our toes in the water. 

I could not imagine a more perfect day for a walk on the beach.  The company was fantastic and the sand itself was soft and warm, not hot. I was careful to pay attention to the sensation of the water on my feet and legs as I stood in the gulf.  Waves rolling past my legs pulled small, broken pieces of shell past me and picked up more shells as it retreated.  I could feel the shells pecking at my skin and feet as the waves rolled in and out. The water also undermined the sand where we stood, and we found our heels sinking deep into the sand as the water rolled back out.

I’m not sure how long we stood there and enjoyed the experience, fifteen to twenty minutes, maybe?  It didn’t seem very long.  Once we decided to leave, we walked to a beach shower to wash the sand off our feet and we headed back to the truck for our next stop, the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge.

The Wildlife Refuge is only fifteen minutes from the beach, so we decided to head that direction for a quick visit and to get our National Parks Passport stamped.  We should have checked before we left because when we arrived, the refuge was closed “for the protection of staff and visitors.”  Just as well… as much as Heather and I talk about leaving our Parks Passport in the truck, we didn’t, so we were going to settle for stamping a blank piece of paper and taping it into our book when we got home.

We drove back to the same shopping and dining area that we left earlier.  Again, parking was difficult but once we found a spot, we walked through a couple of souvenir stores.  There was nothing terribly remarkable about the items for sale in each store.  They both had sand sculptures, t-shirts, hats, decorations with cute beach quotes on them, etc.  The biggest difference between the two were the entries – one had a purple octopus for a doorway, the other an open Shark’s mouth.  After a quick trip through the stores, we headed back to the campground for a visit to the nature center and chores.

The campground’s Nature Center is one building in a complex that includes tennis and pickleball courts, a large pool, an amphitheater, camp store, bike rental, bathrooms, showers, and laundry.  Heather and I looked at the displays which included fox, a cougar, a loggerhead turtle shell, and live displays with area snakes and fish.  And a small, but live American aggilator.

The next time Heather and I make it to Gulf Shores, we will consider planning the trip to catch things we missed this time around such as the Waterway Village Zydeco & Crawfish Festival (April) or the National Shrimp Festival (October).  We’ll take advantage of other restaurants in the area, spend more time on the beach, and replace my family’s fond memories of Gulf Shores with our own.

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