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’t argue with that either.
It’s called the Big Bend around here. It’s the bump on the Florida Panhandle 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 to get to Panama City, to the condo/strip mall culture that’s just like all the other beachfront areas I’ve passed through on the Atlantic seacoast and most of Florida.
It’s the land that time forgot. You know how you sometimes wonder what a place was like in the 50′s (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 … Dollar Stores seem to be the growth retail sector in our great new American economy.
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’ve 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.
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!
The weather forecast was for a big storm in the afternoon, and sure enough, I drove right into it about 5pm. My 5pm that is. I hadn’t quite realized I’d crossed a time zone, so it was really their 4pm. 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 walmart, as good a place as any to ride out a storm. 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 allow overnights, which is unkind of them.
Wednesday
It was stunningly clear after the storm. Even the walmart parking lot 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.
I decide to repeat a fun adventure from last time and take the Mobile ferry, that is to say, the ferry across the mouth of the Mobile Bay. The bay is quite large, but the actual mouth is pretty narrow. 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.
It’s a long drive, and even pristine beachfront gets boring after a while. That’s my excuse for spacing out and totally missing a crucial jog in my route – I just kept on driving straight down the very straight road when I shoulda zigged right at the light to catch the last bridge off this skinny bit of sand. Eight miles later the road dead ended and I knew I’d f—ed up. The speed limit around here is 35 mpg, which was just fine on a leisurely cruise to the ferry. But after I hit the dead end I really wanted to punch the accelerator and erase my mistake quickly. 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. That was a nerve-bending twenty minutes of driving just to get back on track. slow torture.
So… you guessed it, I missed my ferry again. 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. The ferry loads right next to Civil War vintage Fort Morgan at the tip on the east side, then it lets you out right next to Civil War vintage Fort Dauphin on the west side. Actually It is Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, but I prefer Fort Dauphin. Unlike the clever sand fort back in Norh Carolina, these are both stone forts 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.
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) outside Gulfport. 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!
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