I am determined to chronicle our family beach trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama, so I’m back-posting starting with Day 1, which consisted mostly of driving a van pulling our little fishing boat and a truck pulling our camper. Somehow, I managed to come out on the better end of that deal as I had our oldest, aka Curly, who is 16 now and a licensed driver, with me along with Li’l Bit and Li’l Bro. They barely made any sounds the entire trip, and Curly and I had some good convos on the way down PLUS he drove the entire trip down, which took us about 8 hours with lots of traffic late Saturday afternoon as we neared the beach.

When we got there, a cold front was crossing over the biggest part of the Southeastern United States including Gulf Shores, so it was going to be a cold night down in the upper 40s. The boys might have gotten a bit chilly that first night in the tent, but after that it was never below 60 degrees at night.

The best surprise other than the FABULOUS campground we discovered at Gulf State Park was the alligator friends in the canal behind our campsite. Yes, they were in there just steps from our site, and it was actually fun to see them come out each evening at dusk to presumably find their dinner. Thankfully, they weren’t interested in eating any of us. If you look closely at the photos below, you can see just the top of the the head of what we figured was about a 4-foot-long gator based on the time we saw him/her surface more to check us out.

 

 

As soon as we finished setting up, Curly grabbed a rod and reel to see what he could catch. It wasn’t what he was hoping for, but he caught an enormous snapping turtle that broke the line just as he was about to figure out how to get it back into the water and off his line! It was much larger in diameter than our large fishing net, which must be about 2 feet across. I didn’t get a photo as it got away just as he was getting it to the surface!

 

Here’s a nice view in the two photos below from both sides of our set-up for the 5 nights we stayed here. I’ve never done this before, but we loved it so much that I’ve already booked us for 7 nights here next October.

Our only other trip to Gulf Shores was way back in 2009, and while it was fun it wasn’t as memorable as this. For a fall beach trip, this is definitely the place for us hands down. If anyone from Tennessee State Parks is reading, you need to quit sending out surveys and just go see how Alabama State Parks does it, including being WELCOMING to large families such as ours with no extra charges for our immediate children (yes, folks, Tennessee State Parks charges you if you have more than 2 children or you are forced to lie to avoid the extra charges. It is incredibly wrong on so many levels … and stepping down off the soapbox).

Back to the wonderful campsite with paved pull-thru and CLEAN and well-kept and just, everything about it we loved! We were close to the end of the waterfront sites, so there was just a dead-end cul-de-sac just beyond our campsite, which was perfect for our younger kids to ride their bikes. We don’t have anywhere nice for them to ride anymore since we moved to the country, so they enjoyed riding every evening after dinner.

I took these photos below our second full day there as the sun was setting. I’ve never seen such a gorgeous sky on the Gulf. The beach itself was just about two minutes by van from our site, and many people bike to it. In the photos below, it was past the canal and we could see the beach pavilion just over the tree line.

 

We go to the beach and stay all day and take food, toys, and beach stuff so we drive and don’t have to worry about the busy road you must cross to get to the beach. When our kids are older, I could see biking but for now we’ll enjoy my plumber van with seats and rubber floors (which still happens to be full of sand which I kind of like as a reminder of our wonderful week!).

You can read about Day 2 and Day 3 if you’d like!