Down the Coast of Imprecision

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Outside Magazine, August 1991

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Down the Coast of Imprecision
Paradise—and paradox—in the realm of Flora-Bama

By Geoffrey Norman

At the western end of the Florida Panhandle, and along the very bottom of eastern Alabama, the best roads go on for a while, then dead-end at the Gulf Coast passes—those places where water from farther inland empties into the sea. It is always a disappointment when one of the passes is finally bridged in the name of progress, making the Gulf Coast more accessible. Something wild is lost; wildness being, often enough, the mere opposite of accessibility.

The openings from the bays into the Gulf, especially the narrow ones, are tricky, with shifting channels, strong currents, and shallow bars. They were ideal for pirates and rum runners, who found this coast congenial in their day. A good man with nerve could slip through a pass that would scare off the feds, especially if he did it at night. It's a skill that, regardless of the legal questions involved, is becoming a lost art. And it's one more reason I hate to see these inlets bridged and bulkheaded.

The passes make land navigation interesting, too, since they haven't all been bridged, so you can't just put the Gulf of Mexico out of your mind and drive along its shore forever. Sooner or later the road ends, and there is only water.

So if you want to drive along the Gulf Coast, you have to keep turning inland. And once you turn away from the shoreline, everything changes. It is striking how quickly the world goes from blinding white sand and sea oats to dense, gothic live oaks, sweet gums, and cypresses, all dripping with Spanish moss. Just a mile inland, the water changes, too. The emerald Gulf is replaced by the dark, tannin-stained rivers that feed the passes. The T-shirt shops, tourist bars, and half-million-dollar condos of the beach towns quickly become patch farms, pecan orchards, and little Baptist churches with graveyards out back.

If it were all one world or the other, the Gulf Coast would be considerably less fun to drive. As it is, though, you can slip from the vastness of the open water to the lushness of the inland, rural South almost without noticing.

My favorite Gulf Coast road trip begins near the mouth of Alabama's Mobile Bay and runs down the length of the Florida Panhandle, eventually picking up old U.S. 98—a killer highway if ever there was one. The beginning stretch, though, on Alabama 182, is one I have driven so often that I know it like a commuter. If you begin at Gulf Shores heading east along the beaches, you pass from Alabama into Florida at the same moment that you pass one of the finest honky-tonks in Christendom. It sits on the line between the two states (where the highway number changes from 182 to 292), and for reasons having to do with state liquor laws, it is called—cleverly enough—the Flora-Bama. People go there from at least six states to do their drinking, and on a Friday or Saturday night the sheriff sometimes has to dispatch a deputy to direct traffic. The Flora-Bama is close enough to the Gulf to be within easy striking distance of any serious hurricanes, and there is a gazebo-like deck/bar built out on the dune and a few volleyball nets strung up on the beach. On Sunday afternoons, skydivers have been known to drop in from 12,000 feet and make landings close to the gazebo, after which someone hands them cold beers. The Flora-Bama is obviously quite a place, and the spiritual distance between it and the Baptist churches a few miles inland can be measured only in astronomical terms.

Continuing east on 292, if you pass the Flora-Bama (and sometimes you should), the road will dead-end on you. This is because the mouth of Pensacola Bay has not been bridged, and probably never will be. It is, however, guarded by forts. These brick forts were built in the 1840s; they are abandoned now, but during the Civil War they were active. On the sea side of Pensacola Bay, the forts were in Union hands; on the land side, they were manned by Confederates. From a historical perspective, the arrangement is typical of things in this part of the world. The coast is always one thing, the interior another—and as for the margin in between, it has always been imprecise and interesting.

From the end of Highway 292, you can park your car and walk a couple of miles to the fort and the western edge of the bay. Jetties made from old ballast stones angle off into the pass from the beach, and if you dive around them you can almost always spear a few flounder. More serious diving will now and then yield cannon balls and other treasures from the days when the forts did their part for the war effort.

The beach along here, both on the Gulf and Bay sides, is usually fairly empty. Sailboaters sometimes use the bay as an anchorage, and you can often smell their steaks grilling in the afternoon. A surf caster might make it this far along the beach, too, but often as not you will have the place to yourself. And not more than ten miles from the Flora-Bama.

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