Our last full day in Gulf Shores was kind of our one and only "perfect" day. We kayaked, went to a fun kid restaurant, spent the whole afternoon and early evening on the beach, then hit up a fun grown-up restaurant, then ice cream, then bed.
I got up early—my one day I got up early, because I’m more of a night owl than an early bird—and headed to the beach by myself to catch the sunrise. I was a tad late. I think it came up at 6:30am, and I was out there around 6:45am. But it was still that lovely calm of the early morning when the sun beams dash at a severe angle across everything. I walked a long ways…a mile, or more, and back, just…enjoying.
But I still had one activity I *needed* to do before we left: kayaking.
Paddle buddies 4 lyfe
I’ll take pretty much any excuse to get on the water. Part of the appeal of doing so in Gulf Shores was the chance to explore. There’s not a lot of rivers, but the lakes—most of them are lagoons, technically—are interesting and adventurous. There’s actually a “canoe trail” you can take complete with waypoints to hit. But it’s many miles round trip, so I chose a simpler, shorter, more flexible, and direct option: Little Lagoon.
Despite the name, it’s not particularly little, stretching about 10 miles long and half a mile wide. It connects to the state park lakes via a canal. (Actually, it turns out you can’t actually get through without portaging across the main road. Alas.) Anyway, Little Lagoon is surrounded on all sides by fascinating homes and businesses, so there’s much to see.
Happily for me, Camille was as adamant about kayaking as she was about fishing the previous day. Colleen dropped us off at Gulf Shores Bike & Kayak and took off to shop with Es. We rented a double kayak. The launch spot is pretty. It’s calm, black water with a maze of reeds, so you can noodle through it all and feel a tiny bit lost.
We got our paddles wet through the reed maze and then doubled back to the launch point, floated under a low bridge, and found ourselves paddling a similar reedy stretch of water behind a bunch of businesses we'd seen, including Matt's ice cream (cough, cartel, cough).
That stretch was my favorite. You meander past these businesses—all of which have little docks—and pass by a lot of intriguing/beautiful houses—all of which have boat houses.
It’s like a Venetian neighborhood, with water-roads.
After a spell, you round a corner and slip out into Little Lagoon.
Little Lagoon is not so little for a kayak with two people, when one of those people is doing 99.9% of the paddling. It’s of course more wide open than the water neighborhood, but it’s still enchanting house-watching. You gently paddle past pier after dock after boat house. Some pristine and expensive-looking, some completely demolished by storms and time, the rest somewhere in between.
We didn't make it super far into Little Lagoon—maybe a mile and a half. But we hit this little sandbar that stretched dozens of feet out into the water. So we stopped there and horsed around for a while.
At that point Camille was pretty done, so we headed back. Altogether, we floated somewhere between 4-5 miles total. But it felt so good to be in a boat, and all the better with my little buddy.
Oh, also: Camille is now planning to own and operate a kayak rental business, in addition to her career as a professional fisherperson (that she decided on the previous day). She said I can work for her. I will 1,000% hold her to that in about 20 years.
Leen and Es picked us up, and we all went to Lulu's for lunch. Lulu's is a big, bright, partially open-air family restaurant right on the canal. They have a big ropes course thing that…was closed for renovations. Dang. The kids were disappointed. But there’s also an arcade, a sand pit situation for littles, and fun stuff like caricature drawing and face painting. The girls got temporary tats. Es got two roses. Camille got a tiger face.
Success on the beach
I take a fair amount of pride in my Adventure Captaining. I keep getting better at planning and execution. And this evening, I was at the top of my game.
I’m not humblebragging. I’m arrogantbragging.
After Lulu’s, Colleen was itching to get us all to the beach for a long afternoon. I knew this would be tricky because everyone was tired, and Camille especially needs a ton of down time. We went to the beach I had discovered the other day on a scouting expedition, right on the Florida-Alabama border, just 10 minutes or so from place.
Everyone was very pleased by the beach I found. It was just…perfect. Hardly anyone else there. Air temp was unreal. Water temp was a little cool until you got used to it. White sand. Few condos or high rises, because it was state park property. Rocky outcroppings to climb on. Gorgeous.
Es and Camille played on the boogie board and skim board in the surf while we grownups sat and rested for a hot minute. Before too long though, Camille gave up on the skim board. And Essie wanted to play with me in the surf. So Camille and Leen pivoted to playing in the sand (one of the kid’s very favorite beach activities), while I joined Es in the water.
I ran into the surf like you do, but I stepped into a hole or depression and jarred my back. I knew it would hurt later. The next morning, it did. And it hurt worse in the ensuing days. I had to go to a doctor when we got home. So it goes.
Ignoring my impending back immobility, Essie and I had a blast body surfing. The waves were quite large—the area had a red flag warning that day, so the surf was up—but we kept reasonably close to the shore. She was in the zone. I joked about not angering Poseidon, and she ran with that, shouting into the waves, “Come at me, Poseidon! Is that the best you got? I came to slay dragons!”
She does not understand the concept of not angering the gods. But Poseidon showed mercy and let us enjoy ourselves without tragedy.
After a while, she excitedly dragged me off to do beachcombing.
We didn’t intend to, but we walked for a long way along the beach. It may have been a mile or more of meandering. Along the way we saw a lot of washed-up jellyfish. We drew circles around them in the sand so no one would accidentally step on them. We collected many, many shells and put them in her little bag, which was already half full of shells from previous days.
My legs were getting tired (I had walked a long way on the beach by myself that morning), and the sun was beginning to drop. I wanted to spend some time just sitting quietly on the beach with Colleen. So we headed back.
I managed to squeeze in some Leen time. Mostly, we were standing together with our feet in the surf, just happy. I think we both got a little teary. We’d worked so hard for this. And waited so long. It almost didn’t happen. But we did it. We won at life, at least for the moment.
Then we saw dolphins. A bunch of them, in turn. Just doing their thing, surfacing, with occasional blowhole spray. So lovely. Essie squealed, grabbed the camera, and tried to capture them.
After a while she abandoned that project and snapped some cool pics of Leen and me (such a sweet-hearted child), and then she did a whole photo session of Camille.
What a riot, those two, when they get it going.
I wanted to stay until the sun was gone, because dusk on the beach is my favvvvvvorite. We hung around, being silly, being sweet. We trekked back to the car–there’s a long, long boardwalk, and it takes a while to get there—and watched the sun drop, drop, drop as we walked.
Here’s where the rest of my plan succeeded: I knew we needed the afternoon dinking around on the beach, but that was the easy part. I wanted to stick around long enough to catch dusk, and we succeeded. But I also figured if we did that, we would be wet and sandy with the sun down, and hungry, and I wanted to have a good dinner to cap off the trip.
So when I packed our stuff for the beach, I packed nice clothes for Camille and me, and made sure Es had at least decent clothes to change into. (Leen already looked cute and classy in her beach attire.) I wisely grabbed a comb, because I knew I would ditch my hat when we went to a restaurant and I’d have hat hair. I even brought my glasses along so I could ditch my sunnies and contacts and see clearly for the night.
This beach is right next to a trendy, popular restaurant called The Gulf. It’s made of shipping containers stacked on each other at perpendicular angles. It’s partially covered, but like a lot of restaurants in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, it’s largely open air. I wanted to go to this restaurant. Leen wanted to as well. I got myself and Camille changed right there in the van in the parking lot, and we headed in.
The rest of the family was buzzing around the gift shop. I got in line for food. Eventually Camille got tired of the gift shop and came to find me, with her Nintendo Switch in tow. Es followed. Then I sent them to grab us a table—a nice picnic table-style setup in a primo spot in the restaurant.
We got our food and enjoyed it, and laughed really hard together, then headed back to the condo where everyone crashed. Hard. Exhaustion all around, but happiness. The girls fell asleep on the couches watching YouTube on the TV again.
Sometimes it just all comes together. Especially if you plan ahead of time with the wisdom and heart of a true Adventure Captain.
Fond farewell and Buc-ee’s
In the morning, Colleen and I squeezed in one last little beach jaunt before we drove home. Just a few minutes together on the beach without the kids. Reflecting. Appreciating out loud. Sigh. This was perfect. Bliss. Just what we wanted and needed.
When we turned from the beach to head back to the condo, we began our very long journey back home. We frenetically packed and cleaned up the condo and made it out the door just a few minutes past check out time (10am). We had…too much stuff. To wit: Leen had to squeeze the air out of the last pool inflatable in the front seat of the car, while we drove.
Forty minutes or so out of Gulf Shores is Buc-ee’s, where gassed up and got weird food. Buc-ee’s is one of those regionally famous places that is completely bonkers. It’s technically a gas station, but it's the largest gas station I’ve ever seen, by a long shot. It was also really busy–like, way busier than any gas station I’ve been in. (A worker mentioned this it’s way worse in the summer. Yeesh.)
They have mountains of drinks and snacks and tacky gifts, as well as a restaurant’s worth of food options. You can order what you want at a deli counter, but they also just make the same five sandwiches over and over and keep a pile of each in a large central kiosk sort of thing. The sandwiches are hot, and you can grab ‘em and go, which we did.
I had a giant kielbasa on a stick. Amazing. The BBQ sauce on the brisket was also really good. ‘Merica.
I drove for four and a half hours straight. Instead of interstate, we ended up on a smaller but faster road, and it was lovely and scenic. We cruised through quiet and pretty (and sometimes backwoodsy) parts of Alabama, including the surprisingly cool Mobile, and then through Mississippi and Tennessee.
We stopped, then I kept driving. Another four hours. The kids were mostly really good, just tired and quiet and on their devices.
By the time we stopped—in Cape Girardeau, MO, for Jimmy Johns, per Essie’s request—it was nearly 9pm. We got our food, then topped off the gas tank, and Leen drove the rest of the way. It was that achingly long three hours-plus that you do at the end of any road trip. We made it home after midnight. Exhausted but happy. Already dreaming about when we can go back.
This piece is part of a series of pieces around our recent spring break trip. There’s more to come, but you can catch up to where we are so far by reading these. In chronological order: