An Alabama Adventure

Every man can transform the world from one of the monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.
--H. Rider Haggard

The past few days I’ve been in Foley, Alabama.  But now, my stomach is completely full and my skin is totally burned, which means its time to go.  I’ve been visiting my friend Ed who recently moved here and we’ve had three days of adventures and a complete Alabama experience.  I got to live a bit of life on the Gulf: fishing, beaches, kayaking, wild life (human and animal), country music at red-neck bars, fried food, bbq, and peeing into empty kegs.

Unfortunately there were no alligators.

On Sunday we decided to go kayaking at Wolf Creek Park.  Ed conveniently had two inflatable kayaks that we loaded into the back of his Jeep with a few bottles of water and some bug spray.  Wolf Creek Park is a newer park in Foley, and it has a nice little ramp specifically for launching kayaks and small boats into the inland water passages off the Gulf Coast.  We inflated the two boats, dragged them down to the ramp, and set off down the narrow passage of dark water that was walled with tropical greenery.  The park is also a bird rookery and is home to several species of birds including heron, hawks, warblers, and countless others.  As we paddled down the still water, we saw multiple fish jumping, and birds occasionally diving down from the sky and quickly catching them.  Supposedly the waterways are also an occasional home to alligators.  We were asking other people in kayaks that we passed if they knew of alligators in the area.  Some told us that the area we were in did not have many as it was too close to the saltwater, and others told us that they had indeed seen some in the past.   We were hoping to see one, but we were not so fortunate to be able to chalk that off our experience list. Even though we didn’t see any, just the thought that we might made it much more of an adventurous and exciting trip.

Pirates Cove - Home of the Bushwhacker

After several hours on the water, we needed some refreshment.  Ed insisted that I had to have a drink called a Bushwhacker, so we headed over to my first red neck bar called Pirate's Cove Marina.  We drove for about ten minutes and then turned down a dirt road.  A wooden plank nailed to a pole alongside the road had “Pirates Cove” (no apostrophe) burned into it.  A bit further down the road a large piece of plywood was leaning a tree and in large painted letters said “DO NOT BRING YOUR OWN ALCOHOL ONTO PROPERTY.”  We drove a bit further into a sprawling dirt area that was filled with over-sized pickup trucks parked at random angles, and we found something that would work as a parking spot for Ed’s Jeep.  We got out and headed towards a beach area crowded with people.  Adults, kids, and wet dogs were flowing in and out of an old, weathered wooden building that had a corrugated tin roof.  There were several boats along a small pier and up on the sand, one of them complete with multiple confederate flags flying from it.   We went inside the building and stood in a line of about five or six people in various stages of sobriety to order our Bushwhackers and some food.  They offered a complete menu of burgers, French fries, fried onion rings, fried chicken fingers, fried corn dogs, and hot wings.   A very large woman with a jovial laugh was behind the counter busily taking people’s orders and talking with everyone seated at the bar.  At one point she yelled out above the clatter, “I’m being sexually harassed!” 

I yelled back “Are you complaining or bragging?” 

That right there's a real redneck yacht

She laughed and replied, “It don’t happen to me often so I gotta crow about it when it does!”

When I finally reached the counter, she smiled and said “Whatchy’all want, baby doll?”  I ordered our Bushwhackers and a burger and fries.  She went behind the bar and filled up two plastic cups with what looked like a chocolate milkshake that came from a dispenser.  She pulled out one of those soda-dispensing handles that bartenders have, and sprayed a shot of something onto the top of the milkshake. I asked her if that was coke she was putting on top, and she laughed and exclaimed, “No, we got this thing rigged up to shoot Bacardi 151.”

There was an area next to the bar that was covered with a white tent.  Several tables were inside, and so we walked in and sat down to wait for our food.  There was a large spray-painted sign that instructed, “No dogs allowed in dining room.”  The dogs completely ignored this sign, though, as the “dining room” (it really was nothing more than bunch of tent-covered tables) had at least six or seven happy, wet dogs wandering around and collecting hand-outs of French fries and bits of burger or chicken fingers.  

As we waited, I drank my Bushwhacker. It actually was really good and was the perfect thing to drink on a hot, humid afternoon.  Our food eventually came and as soon as they set it on our table, a friendly little brown and white dog had taken note. He came over and sat down next to me and looked up expectantly with a slight wag of his tail.  I shared my lunch with him and we finished our food and had one or two more Bushwhackers.  After about an hour of being Pirates, Ed said there was something else I should see in Alabama, so we went back to the Jeep and drove away from Pirates Cove.

And I thought Stonehenge was in England!

We drove to an area that covered several square miles and which was filled with tall pine trees. They obviously were not natural as they were growing in neat rows.  As we passed down a well-manicured road, Ed told me to keep an eye out in the trees for something cool.  Several hundred yards ahead, I saw it—Stonehenge.  Well, at least a replica of it.  We parked and got out of the car and walked to a life-size replica of Stonehenge that sat amongst the trees.  It’s called Bamahenge and was built by an Alabama billionaire who owns the property.  He also had several dinosaurs hidden in the trees as well.  We spent a few minutes checking out the tall gray stones and discovering that they weren’t really made of stone:  they were hollow and made of fiberglass, making a booming echo when we rapped our knuckles on them.  Afterwards we walked back to the Jeep, and a large, black pickup truck had pulled up.  A young family was getting out of the truck: a father, a mother holding a baby in her arms, a shy young girl about 6 years old, and an excitable young boy of about 4 years old.  The boy had a head full of blonde curls and was wearing faded jeans that had holes in the knees.  He was dashing around the tired-looking mother and excitedly asking “Are we going on an adventure?  Are we going on an adventure?”  The large gray Bamahenge stones caught his eye and he immediately stopped and gasped.  He pointed into the trees and exclaimed, “Look! An adventure!”  I noticed the worn-out looks on his parents’ faces as they walked their children over to the curiosity.  It looked more like they were headed to some chore.  The little boy gleefully bounded ahead of them, his sense of adventure filling him with energy and awe.

Don't I look like a real fisherman?

The next day we decided to go fishing.  We threw a few poles, a tackle box, and some snacks into Ed’s Jeep and went to Gulf State Park fishing pier.  The pier extended several hundred feet over the water and was peppered with people standing near the edge casting their lines into the murky waters below them.  We found a relatively empty spot near a bench and set our gear down.  As we were getting the lures attached to the lines, I was watching a group of four shirtless boys just opposite of us.  They’d cast their lines out, reel them in quickly, and then cast again.  About every third or fourth cast, they’d have a fish at the end of their line.

“This looks easy!” I thought to myself.  I cast my line out.  It made a long ZZZZZZZZT sound as it flew out and eventually plunked into the water.  I pulled it back in:  nothing.  I did it again: no fish.  A third try: still no fish.  I turned and looked at the boys behind us and two of them were just pulling their lines out of the water with fish flapping at the ends of them.  I cast the line several more times always pulling back in the same empty lure that I had thrown out.    This went on for about an hour.  As I looked into the water below the pier, I could see schools of fish swimming around.  They apparently just weren’t interested in my line.  At one point, Ed had managed to catch a fish.  He pulled it in, screaming and laughing, “Look! I got one!” He was making quite a ruckus about it, and the boys had looked over at us. They obviously weren’t impressed with just one fish, but it still was an accomplishment. We really didn’t intend to keep the fish we caught, so Ed asked the boys if they wanted it—they gladly took it.  We cast lines out for about another hour or so with no luck and decided to move further down the pier to try our luck in deeper water.  At the end of the pier, someone suggested that we try catching a bait fish first and then using that fish to catch larger one.  We eventually figured out that this worked much better:  rather than using lures, we put pieces of frozen shrimp onto small hooks and dropped them straight over the side. Within less than a minute we were both able to catch a small fish, about 3 inches long.   I put the small fish onto a larger hook and cast it out into the water again, and in a few minutes I pulled up a bluefish about a foot long or so.  It was my only “prized” catch of the day, and it was enough for me.  I unhooked him and threw him back in the water.  People on the pier were catching all kinds of fish: mackerel, trout, flounder.  

Didn't want to catch this guy!

Schools of stingrays swam past the pier several times.  There also were several black-tip sharks and bull sharks that lurked nearby.  They were pretty adept at waiting for someone to catch a fish and then biting it right off the end of the line.  As I was standing with my line in the water at one point, I heard Ed yelling at the fish several feet away.  He had hooked a large fish but it broke his line before he could pull it up to the pier.  Ed actually spent a lot of time yelling and excitedly pointing out every fish in the water.  At one point, he had asked an old salty gentleman with several fishing rods in a bucket how frequently he fished out on the pier.  The guy turned his head to Ed and spoke through a thick moustache and beard, “I come out here lots.  It’s a pretty good place to be, except for when the tourists take over.”  He eyed Ed warily when he spoke the last few words.  Obviously, fishing from the pier was not an adventure for this guy. 

This afternoon I’ll be continuing my journey down the eastern coast of Florida.  My goal is to make it to Key West in the next several days.  I’m hoping to see at least one alligator somewhere along the way, but even if I don’t I’m sure I’ll run into some other kind of adventures that will make the trip exciting.  

The men's restroom at Pirate's Cove