The marquee: a 1,540-foot concrete fishing pier, one of the longest on the Gulf. Park in the pier lot and walk the deck out over the water. Day-use parking ~$10. ~30 min.
Here it is — the Gulf State Park Pier, and it is a whopper: one thousand five hundred and forty feet of concrete reaching straight out over the Gulf, one of the longest piers anywhere on the Gulf of Mexico. Pull into the pier parking area on your right — there's a day-use fee, usually about ten dollars — and then do the thing you came to do: get out and walk it.
Because this is a place you experience on foot. Stroll out along the deck, past the anglers with their rods propped on the rail, all the way to the big octagonal platform at the end, and stand there with nothing but green-blue water in every direction and the whole Alabama coast at your back. People catch king mackerel, redfish, cobia, the occasional shark off this rail. Pelicans cruise the pilings. At dawn it's one of the best sunrise seats on the coast, and dolphins roll by more mornings than not.
Look down at the sheer size and strength of those pilings and know this: the pier you're standing on has been earned the hard way. Boone will give you its full storm-battered life story right where you're parked — it's a saga of hurricanes and stubbornness. For now, just walk out over the Gulf and take it in.
When you've had your fill of the view, head back to the car. We'll roll a little farther east along Beach Boulevard to the Lodge.
Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans · CC BY-SA 3.0
