The Flora-Bama

Gulf Shores, Alabama: I am sure you think all we do is drive from one restaurant to the other. Well, this is especially true while we are on this part of our adventure. Jimmy Buffett grew up, partied and began his career in this area. Many of the places Jimmy sings about are around here, so poor DT is parading me around to each and every one of them and buying me a beer.

And speaking of parades... there were two Mardi Gras parades along the beach road today, so we planned our route to drive between them. Our scheme didn't work - we were caught up in the preparation for the second parade. Dang. But we were able to see the floats lining-up for the Perdido Beach parade.

Floats lining up in the parade staging area along the beach road


GO DUCKS: The Lions Club welcomed us

After an hour crawling along in traffic, we finally made it to the Florida-Alabama border, home of the infamous Flora-Bama bar straddling the state line. (Jimmy wrote Bama Breeze in tribute to this roadhouse. I have posted the video below for your viewing pleasure.) The Flora-Bama was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 (gee, anyone noticing a theme around here?), closed for about a year and has since reopened as a hodge-podge of discombobulated beach shacks running together to form the most popular beach bar in America.

Terry the Tourist at the Flora-Bama


The Flora-Bama


This is the only section of the original bar remaining after the hurricane


The beach at the Flora-Bama


View of the Flora-Bama from the beach


One of the many venues inside the Flora-Bama

It was about 1p when we arrived at the historical Flora-Bama. Crowds were pretty thin - everyone was at the parade (or fighting parade traffic). By the time we had taken a look through the joint and ordered a beer, people were beginning to trickle in from the parade - their necks draped with colorful Mardi Gras beads. Soon DT and I were also wearing beads! A band was playing good country music and people were chatting with everyone. It was really a fun place. I won't say it was the cleanest place I have ever visited, but it was certainly interesting and colorful. (Hopefully you all notice the hundreds of bras hanging from the strings across the ceilings, and, NO - one of them is NOT mine!)

Time for lunch! I had fried pickles - called frickles at the Flora-Bama - and DT had a fried oyster Po'boy sandwich.

Frickles at the Flora-Bama. I had several emails asking, so I will tell you: they are dill pickles.


Fried Oyster Po'boy sandwich


And, yes, they DO have a gift shop! Mostly t-shirts and hats.
No tacky bottle openers for our collection. So sad.

But everything isn't all happiness, beer and fried pickles. Remember when I wrote yesterday that we had errands? One of the things we had to do yesterday was talk with our motorcoach tech guru. This guy, who shall remain nameless, knows Country Coach systems inside and out. (If you give me $1000, I will give you his phone number.) The reason we needed to chat with him is the same reason we have always needed to chat with him: sometimes we have a power problem.

When we plug our bus into shore power, the "charge" section of our inverter doesn't always get the message that we have juice. We have to flip the circuit breaker three, four, or more times until the switch does gets the message. So far we have been lucky, but before our luck runs out, we need to have the switch replaced. This afternoon we had a local tech come by to confirm the switch is most likely the cause of our power issue. There is a switch in Mobile, and we are driving to Mobile anyway tomorrow... so while we are there, we will pick up the part and the local guy will replace the switch Thursday morning. Hopefully this will be the end of that trouble... which, knock on wood... is the only problem we are having with our beautiful new Magna Peregrinus.

So now you know - tomorrow we are going on a drive. And I must tell you in advance, our route passes through Fairhope, Alabama - one of the prettiest towns in America and I can't wait to see Fairhope again. Until my next update, I remain, your "Mardi Gras is over" correspondent.

RV Park: Bella Terra RV Resort