The next entry in my occasional travel series of places I’ve been to.
If you grow up in northern latitudes, winter vacations usually point in a few directions: the Caribbean, Florida, Arizona, maybe Texas, or Hawaii.
But twice now, I’ve flown toward a different stretch of coastline – Gulf Shores, Alabama – and both times I came away surprised, refreshed, and quietly grateful.
Gulf Shores isn’t the first place that comes up when snow is still piled along the roads back home. It’s not tropical in the way South Florida feels tropical. Late winter temperatures can be mild rather than hot. You might need a light jacket in the morning and at night and the Gulf breeze can have an edge to it.
The beaches stretch wide and pale along the Gulf of Mexico. The sand is fine, almost powdery in places, and the water carries that familiar emerald tint the region is known for. It isn’t crowded in late winter. You can walk long distances without weaving through umbrellas or beach chairs. The rhythm and the conversations are slower and easier.
And the people? That’s what stays with me. On both trips, I found myself in unhurried exchanges. Restaurant staff who took the time to ask where I was from, and, at times, when the restaurant wasn’t busy, the conversation lasted minutes instead of seconds. Locals who offered recommendations without sounding rehearsed. Fellow travelers who seemed genuinely relaxed, not performing relaxation.
There’s a friendliness along that Alabama coast that feels rooted rather than commercial. And then there’s the seafood. Oh, man, the seafood.
I’ve eaten seafood in many places. But some of the meals I had along the Gulf Shores and Orange Beach area still rank near the top. Fresh shrimp that tasted as if they’d come off the boat hours earlier. Oysters are briny and clean. Grouper that flaked perfectly under a fork. Nothing overly complicated. Just well-prepared food that respected the water it came from. It’s one thing to visit a beach town. It’s another to taste it.
What made those trips even more memorable, though, was the drives I went on.
On one of them, I kept heading west along Interstate 10, crossing state lines, watching the landscape subtly shift as I moved through Mississippi and Louisiana, eventually reaching Beaumont, Texas. Long bridges. Low marshlands. Billboards advertising boiled crawfish or roadside pecans. Water appearing and disappearing beside the highway. You stop for gas, stretch your legs, and realize you’re moving through a corridor of American geography that doesn’t always get romanticized, even though it should.
I spent the night in Beaumont before turning around and retracing my route east. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t planned down to the minute. It was simply movement and the kind of spontaneous extension that road trips allow.
And here’s the part that surprised me most: I wasn’t tired.
After hours of driving, stopping, sightseeing, and absorbing new places, I expected that drained feeling that sometimes follows long travel days. Instead, I felt energized and invigorated. I kept reminding myself, “I’m in the Deep South on the Gulf Coast. This is awesome!”
There’s a difference between being busy and being alive. On that stretch of road, with the Gulf air still lingering in my clothes and the memory of good meals fresh in my mind, I felt awake in a way that routine doesn’t always allow. Maybe it was the contrast to winter back home or the openness of the landscape. Gulf Shores may not compete with South Florida’s late-winter temperatures. It doesn’t try to be Sarasota or Miami Beach. It feels more understated and less polished in some ways – and better for it.
It offers warmth, but not always heat. It offers beauty, but without pretense.
When I eventually flew north again, back toward colder air and familiar streets, I carried more than just the memory of beaches and seafood. I carried the reminder that sometimes the best travel isn’t about chasing the obvious destination.
Sometimes it’s about turning west on I-10, driving a little farther than planned, and discovering that the road itself gives back more than it takes.
johnberkovich.com 