Gulf State Park

Gulf State Park

28 stops· 51 min· 10.0 mi

Alabama's stretch of the Gulf of Mexico — six thousand acres of sugar-white sand, dune lakes, and maritime forest wrapped around one of the most storm-tested state parks in America. Ranger Quinn drives you from the great record-setting fishing pier, past the resilient beachfront Lodge, up along the freshwater lakes hiding just behind the dunes, and east down the coast to the dramatic inlet at Perdido Pass. Along the way, Ranger Boone Merrick tells the tales: the sugar-white sand that rode down from the Appalachian Mountains, the tiny endangered beach mouse that lives nowhere else on earth, the loggerhead turtles that crawl ashore in the dark, the Civilian Conservation Corps boys who built this park in the Depression, the guns of Fort Morgan and 'Damn the torpedoes,' and the long story of a coast that keeps getting knocked flat by hurricanes — and keeps coming back. Bring sunscreen, and watch the water.