Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 96: the september window is open

The sun goes down tonight close to an hour earlier than it did on the Fourth of July. Nobody announced that. It happened a minute or two a day while everybody was busy, and now it’s a little after seven, the Gulf is going pink, and the lot at Johnson Beach has more pelicans in it than cars.

That’s the September window. It runs from Labor Day until the license plates start turning Michigan and Ontario, and for those weeks the beach belongs to whoever bothered to show up. If that’s you, here’s how to use it.

Who left, and who stayed

Labor Day took the Saturday-to-Saturday families home. School took the rest. What’s left on the sand at ten in the morning is couples without kids, retirees who figured this out years ago, a few charter captains with a weekday off, and locals, who work all summer and get their beach back at four o’clock in September like a deposit refund.

The snowbirds aren’t here yet. They come when it gets cold somewhere else, and it hasn’t. So this is the one stretch of the year when the beach is warm, the water is warm, and nobody is in front of you. Enjoy it. It’s short.

What changed at the door

Parking. The Johnson Beach lot has spots at noon. The public accesses on the Orange Beach side, Cotton Bayou and Alabama Point, have spots at ten, which in July was a rumor. You can still find the lot full on a Saturday. On a Tuesday you could land a plane in it.

Hours. September is when a lot of kitchens on both sides of the state line go to a five-day week or close the gap between lunch and dinner. Not all of them. Enough that a Monday or Tuesday dinner plan needs a phone call first. Call the place or check its own page, not the map app, which will cheerfully tell you a restaurant is open right up until you’re standing at a locked door reading a handwritten sign. The happy hours mostly hold, and with the crowd gone they’re a real happy hour again instead of a line with drinks in it.

Chairs. The chair services are still out on the big stretches, fewer rows, and the front row is yours if you want it. Or bring your own. Nobody’s going to be forty feet in front of you this month.

The catch: the water is warm and the flag still counts

The Gulf right now is about as warm as it gets all year. It’s also the month when the flag and the sky stop agreeing with each other. A storm far out in the Atlantic or the Gulf, nowhere near us, sends long, slow swell that shows up here under blue sky and lifts the rip currents. September’s specialty is a yellow flag on a perfect day, and people ignore it because it looks like a mistake. It isn’t.

Check the Florida and Alabama flags before you walk down, and check them again after lunch, because they change. If you look at the cam and the water looks slick calm and the flag still says yellow, believe the flag. The cam sees the surface. The flag knows about the trough.

Afternoons still build a cloud or two. The three o’clock radar check isn’t retired, it’s just usually good news now.

An Orange Beach September, specifically

If you’re staying on the Alabama side, this is your month. The jetty at Perdido Pass, out at Alabama Point, is where the locals are at seven in the morning: walkers on the rocks, a couple of rods in the water, a dolphin or two working the outgoing tide. Park, walk out, come back with a story.

The fall fishing is starting to turn on, the big redfish start running the Pass, and the charters have weekday openings they didn’t have in July. If you’ve never been out, September is the cheapest, calmest time to try it. The fishing page has what’s biting and where.

The Wharf’s evenings are pleasant now instead of a project. And next month Gulf Shores throws the Shrimp Festival, which is the unofficial end of the window, so keep the events page open if you’re planning around it.

The day, by the clock

• 6:30. Sunrise, more or less. Walk it. The tide line at this hour has shells on it that will be gone by nine, and the only people out are the ones who know that.
• 9:00. Water. Warmest of the year, flag permitting. Swim in front of a lifeguard stand if there’s one on your stretch; there are fewer in September.
• 12:30. Lunch with no wait. This sentence is not available June through August.
• 3:00. Radar check, then either back in the water or a nap. Both are correct.
• 4:00 to 6:00. Happy hour. Sit at the bar. In July you couldn’t have; the bar was a wall.
• 7:00. Sunset, a few minutes after. Watch it from the sand, not the balcony. You drove all this way.
• 8:00. Dinner, walk-in. Say “two” and watch them seat you like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing. It’s September.

The short version

The crowd left and the water didn’t cool off. Parking is easy, tables are easy, chairs are easy, and the only thing that got harder is the flag, which now lies less than the sky does. Read the flag, call the restaurant, get up for the sunrise once, and take the Orange Beach side seriously.

A few weeks from now the first Ontario plate rolls over the bridge and the window closes. Until then, it’s yours.

— Chris

P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it, free, either side of the line: /submit/