I loved this stretch of country last time<\/a> I was through here and I loved it again this time! My friend Dan called it the Redneck Riviera<\/em>, and I can\u2019t argue with that either.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called the Big Bend<\/strong> around here. It\u2019s the bump on the Florida Panhandle<\/strong> directly below the Georgia-Alabama border (also where the time changes from Eastern to Central!), where the coastline protrudes into the Gulf a little bit. Most of the world just stays on I-10<\/strong> to get to Panama City<\/strong>, to the condo\/strip mall culture that\u2019s just like all the other beachfront areas I\u2019ve passed through on the Atlantic seacoast and most of Florida.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the land that time forgot<\/em>. You know how you sometimes wonder what a place was like in the 50\u2032s (I wonder that about Reno a lot). Well this place probably looked about the same as it does now! Lots of little run-down oyster shacks and small houses and old cars. A complete absence of chain restaurants. Well, they do have Dollar Stores \u2026 Dollar Stores seem to be the growth retail sector in our great new American economy.<\/p>\n

It was late morning and I had breakfast on the brain, so I drove right past all the oyster shacks looking for coffee and eggs, or at least donuts or a burger. I\u2019ve been berating myself about it ever since … although really, facing fried oysters and cole slaw as the first meal of the day is hard to stomach, so to speak.<\/p>\n

There are miles and miles of quiet two-lane road, right along the shore, nothing between you and the water but a couple of pine trees. Very pretty, and a very pleasant way to spend a morning … once you are fed!<\/p>\n

The weather forecast was for a big storm in the afternoon, and sure enough, I drove right into it about 5pm. My 5pm<\/em> that is. I hadn\u2019t quite realized I\u2019d crossed a time zone, so it was really their 4pm<\/em>. Anyway, the sky kept getting darker and uglier, and soon little raindrops turned into sheets of rain, and soon after that we were going 5 mph on our 70 mph freeway. Pretty exciting. By this time I was back in the familiar strip mall beach scene, so I holed up in the Navarre Beach<\/strong> walmart, as good a place as any to ride out a storm.\u00a0 I had good bbq in a little storefront restaurant. No Applebees. According to my app most of the walmarts along the beach around here do not<\/strong> allow overnights, which is unkind of them.<\/p>\n

Wednesday<\/h3>\n

It was stunningly clear after the storm.\u00a0 Even the walmart parking lot<\/a> seemed fresh as the day of creation, as we say down here. I take the slow coast road and just before the causeway to Pensacola I stumble across just my kind of eatin’ place in a little beach strip mall – a hippy\/beachy restaurant (the Native Cafe) that has breakfast served by east coast surfer girls, and oh happiness even has wifi! So the day starts well.<\/p>\n

I decide to repeat a fun adventure from last time<\/a> and take the Mobile ferry<\/strong><\/a>, that is to say, the ferry across the mouth of the Mobile Bay<\/strong>. The bay is quite large, but the actual mouth is pretty narrow.\u00a0 So it takes well over an hour to drive down the sand spit to get there, but once there the ferry itself only takes about 25 minutes – from sitting in the parking lot at one end to driving off on the other.<\/p>\n

It’s a long drive, and even pristine beachfront gets boring after a while.\u00a0 That’s my excuse for spacing out and totally missing a crucial jog in my route \u2013 I just kept on driving straight down the very straight road when I shoulda zigged right<\/em> at the light to catch the last bridge off this skinny bit of sand.\u00a0 Eight miles later the road dead ended and I knew I’d f—ed up. The speed limit around here is 35 mpg<\/em>, which was just fine on a leisurely cruise to the ferry. But after I hit the dead end I really<\/em> wanted to punch the accelerator and erase my mistake quickly.\u00a0 But I had passed the local constable on the way in, so I knew I had to maintain a stately, unhurried 38 mph till I got off his island.\u00a0 That was a nerve-bending twenty minutes of driving just to get back on track.\u00a0 slow torture.<\/p>\n

So\u2026 you guessed it, I missed my ferry again<\/em>. I did calm myself down and managed to do a good thing with the unwanted gift of two-ish extra hours on this side of the bay. I spent an hour on a little loop hike at a wildlife refuge and was feeling almost cheery again by ferry time.\u00a0 The ferry loads right next to Civil War vintage Fort Morgan<\/strong> at the tip on the east side, then it lets you out right next to Civil War vintage Fort Dauphin on the west side.\u00a0 Actually It is Fort Gaines<\/strong> on Dauphin Island<\/strong>, but I prefer Fort Dauphin.\u00a0 Unlike the clever sand fort<\/em> back in Norh Carolina, these are both stone forts<\/em> that didn’t stand a chance against the new rifled barrel cannons the Union brought against them, so Mobile was out of the action very early in the war.<\/p>\n

As is my wont, I dawdled around the Fort Dauphin side so that I ended up having to rocket down I-10 at sunset to make the campground (called Big Biloxi<\/strong>) outside Gulfport<\/strong>. The good news is that is was a very pretty sunset, and a wide open interstate is a pretty good place to watch a sunset … except of course for the bad news that you are admiring it driving 78 mph<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I loved this stretch of country last time I was through here and I loved it again this time! My friend Dan called it the Redneck Riviera, and I can\u2019t argue with that either. It\u2019s called the Big Bend around … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2010-east-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}