Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 122: shrimp festival weekend, and how to go or get around it

The road is already closed. Nobody has fried a single shrimp yet.

Gulf Shores started shutting streets on Monday for the 53rd annual National Shrimp Festival, which runs this Thursday through Sunday, October 8 to 11, on the public beach where Highway 59 runs out of land. If you’re staying on Perdido Key or in Orange Beach this week, the festival affects you whether you go or not, because the one road everybody uses to get there is the one with the barricade on it. So here are two plans: one for going, one for going around.

the short version

• When: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Where: Highway 59 at East Beach Boulevard, Gulf Shores.
• Cost to walk in: nothing. Entry is free, which is how they get you.
• What’s there: food, two stages of music, and art, with more than 50 local and regional vendors, per FOX10’s preview.

what’s closed, and until when

All of this is in place now and reopens Monday, October 12:

• Highway 59 southbound is shut at East and West First Avenue.
• East Beach Boulevard is closed from Highway 59 to East Second Street.
• West Beach Boulevard is closed at West Fourth Street. West Fourth Street itself stays open as the way around.
• East First Street is closed between East Beach Boulevard and East First Avenue.
• The West Gulf Place parking lot is closed, and the East Gulf Place resident lot is closed to the public.

Here’s the line that matters for our side. The beach road from the Key, Perdido Key Drive in Florida and Perdido Beach Boulevard through Orange Beach, turns into East Beach Boulevard in Gulf Shores. Drive it west until it stops and it stops at East Second Street, a few blocks short of the festival, with nowhere obvious to put the car. A barricade is not an opening offer.

if you’re going

Go Thursday or Friday, and go before lunch. It opens at 10. Weekday mornings are when the people who live here go, for the same reason we buy groceries on Tuesday. Saturday afternoon is the big one. If Saturday is your only day, be parked by 10 and gone by 2, or come after dinner for the music.

Don’t aim the car at the beach. From the state line, the drive to the Gulf Shores public beach is about thirteen miles and, on an ordinary Tuesday, under half an hour. This is not an ordinary Tuesday. Cut north to Canal Road, the road along the waterway, take it west to Highway 59, and work south from there, parking where you find a legal spot and walking the rest. Wear the shoes for it.

Or let somebody else drive. One festivalgoer told FOX10 her plan in two sentences: “You need to get down here early if you’re coming. Or you can take the shuttle bus.” The shuttle lots and prices change from year to year, so I won’t guess at them. The festival’s own website has this year’s.

Sunday is a half day. It closes at 5. Showing up at 3:30 gets you ninety minutes and a vendor who is already thinking about the drive home.

Pack for October, and for this October. Sunscreen, because the sun still means it at noon. Some cash, because not every booth’s card reader loves the beach. And a rain jacket: the forecast has more heavy rain in it later this week. A festival in the rain is still a festival, with shorter lines and better parking. Check flags and conditions on /beach-today/ before you leave. If you want a look at the actual sky, the cam on the Key is live. It’s a good many miles east of the festival, so call it a hint, not a forecast.

Check the rules before you bring the dog or the cooler. I don’t know this year’s policy on either, and “a guy on the internet said it was fine” has never once worked on a gate volunteer.

What to eat. Shrimp. I’d assumed that was obvious, but every year somebody walks out holding only a corn dog. Do a full lap before you buy anything, then get the thing you couldn’t stop thinking about on the lap. The funnel cake can be dessert. It doesn’t have to be breakfast.

if you’re not going

Heading north to Foley, the outlets or I-10? Take the Foley Beach Express from Canal Road in Orange Beach. It never touches the festival.

Heading to the west side of Gulf Shores? Use Canal Road to Highway 59, and remember West Beach Boulevard is closed at West Fourth Street, with Fourth Street open as the detour. Give it extra time from Thursday on.

Staying put? Good plan. A crowd that spends the day in Gulf Shores still has to eat dinner somewhere, so expect Orange Beach restaurants to run a wait on Friday and Saturday night. Eat early. Most of the happy hours on our list start in the afternoon, well before the festival lets out. And if you want sand with nobody on it, go the other way entirely: Johnson Beach, at the east end of the Key, will be about as far from a funnel cake as this coast gets.

one last thing

Fifty-three years is a long run for a party thrown in honor of a crustacean. It has lasted because it’s a good one. It lands in the best weather month we have, it costs nothing to walk into, and it’s the weekend this coast stops pretending the season is over. Go once, at least. Go on Thursday, and go around the barricade. The rest of what’s on this month is on /events/.

— Chris

P.S. Owners: festival weekend sends a lot of hungry people looking for a table without a line. Your specials and menu link go straight on your page. Claim it free: /submit/claim/