31 days in Gulf Shores, Alabama

Thursday, 12-3-2015, we rolled out of Gulf Shores, Alabama.
We’d stayed here for an entire month, which is the longest we’ve sat still since we moved into the bus in July. We had mail and other stuff shipped to us there. We made friends. We established favorite restaurants. It was almost like a home!

We stayed at Luxury RV Resort in site 23. It’s a nice place. The people who run it are great. More grass, less gravel and sand would be nice, but our pad was concrete and level and the plumbing and power always worked.

If you go here, I’d recommend a site facing toward the Gulf, on the backside of the campground. Prevailing winds come in from the east. This will put your rig between your patio and the wind. Our site 23 put the wind roaring down the side of the motorhome, rendering our patio nearly useless.

This campground is an easy 4 block walk to the beach.

We did this almost daily with our dogs. They were not allowed on the beach however. The town has a nice fenced off-leash dog run, easy driving (but not walking) distance. We were there almost every day.

The Hangout was a favorite restaurant. We went there twice. Great Seafood. It was a little pricey, as seafood always is – right around $100 for the 3 of us.We  also went to the world famous LuLu’s, which is owned by Jimmy Buffet’s sister. The “thing” there is fried crab claws. They somehow get the outside of the claw off, leaving the meat and a “fin” down the middle. You bite down lightly, and take off the breading and meat, leaving the fin behind. They are small, and a normal adult can eat hundreds. Did I mention they are DELICIOUS!!!

Gulf Shores is just a few miles down the coast from Pensacola Navel Air Station. This is where the best and the brightest go when they “Get Jets”. There is a great Navel Air Museum, a cool old light house, and Pensacola NAS is home to the Blue Angels! We went into Pensacola for the Angels Welcome Home air show, it was AMAZING. If you’ve seen them perform you know how cool they are, well, go see them perform over their HOME FIELD! Best Air Show EVER!

Not only that, but we were treated to near daily air shows right from our campsite! They come screaming down the coast around mid-morning, zoom around a bit, do a vertical, and vanish. This would happen several times a day, almost every day.

They tell me this area becomes “snowbird heaven” after the new year, and is booked solid thru March. November/December is the town’s slow season. No college kids, no snowbirds, just us and the Blue Angles. I’m fine with that.

All in all it was a very nice area, and a very nice campground. The weather was great! (we’re from Chicago so we don’t have very high expectations for November/December) – it was low 70’s and sunny most days. We had a lot of fun hanging on the beach for a month.