Gulf Coast Mardi Gras Road Trip Stop 1 — Mobile

This Mardi Gras trip had been knocking around the back of my mind for a while. And for me, that’s a big piece of retirement travel — finally getting on with the travel I’ve thought about but never found the time to do.

Planning the Trip

I’ve always thought about going further west, to see the celebrations in Lafayette and Cajun Country. And then I remembered my high school friend Scott who lives in Mobile — he’s always banging on about how Mobile was the first US city to do Mardi Gras, that New Orleans is just copying them.

Now, Mardi Gras isn’t just the day; it’s a whole season. It starts in early January on Epiphany and builds momentum, with parades and events first on the weekends, then nearly every day, whipping everyone up to the final pre-Lenten blowout, Fat Tuesday. Over the years, we’ve skipped that final frenzy and instead visited the couple of weeks before Fat Tuesday. It’s been a good strategy; great parades without the full-contact craziness.

First Mardi Gras Parade

Our first parade in Mobile was the Order of the Incas on Friday night. It was chilly; even on the Gulf Coast, February nights can bite. But the parade route was full; it looked like mostly families. Next to us three generations of one family were a well-structured team — grade-school kids at the low metal barriers lining the street,  yelling at every float, begging for throws, then stashing their catches in big shoulder bags; high-school kids behind them, also yelling and waving, snagging whatever passed over the heads of the younger kids; parents behind them, drinking beers and minding the wagon where the kids dumped their shoulder bags; and then the grandparent who, spotting a special throw lying unclaimed in the street, reached through the barrier with their cane to drag it to the curb so a grandkid could pick it up. Obviously not their first parade.

I’m used to folks shouting for throws; I do it myself. But here in Mobile, people were shouting for something new to me — Moon Pies. And they got them; showers of chocolate and vanilla mini-Moon Pies. Then something big smacked me in the chest and bounced back out to the street — a full box of Moon Pies. I looked up at the float. Really? You couldn’t be bothered to open it up? Then a full box of Tastykakes hit Irene on the forehead and dropped to the ground. One of the high school kids picked it up. “Do you want this?” he asked. “Nah, you keep it, “ I said. He quickly stuffed it into his shoulder bag.  After that, waving for throws became as much of a defensive act — blocking incoming boxes — as it was trying to catch the odd string of beads.

Krewe Barn Party

Saturday afternoon, we headed south of downtown into a neighborhood of generic warehouse buildings to meet up with my high school friend Scott at a “barn party” — a pre-parade preview of the floats his krewe, the Cosmic Cowboys, would be rolling on Fat Tuesday. 

Seemed like a bunch of the krewes stored their floats here. We walked by another barn party for the Krewe of LaShe’s (a women’s krewe — LaShe’s → lashes)  where they’d set up kids’ rides on the front lawn of their storage building. Leaving, we got caught up in float traffic as Neptune’s Daughters squeezed out toward that night’s parade marshalling area.

Fairhope’s More Intimate Mardi Gras Parade

We were staying across the bay, on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay because everything in Mobile was booked. So after the barn party, we headed back over the bay to Fairhope, to see what a small town parade would be like. If we thought Friday night’s parade in Mobile was mostly families, Fairhope’s Knights of Ecor Rouge parade was even more so.

Kids lining the parade route were screaming to their friends in the marching bands. Riders on the floats took it as a personal challenge to hurl their throws to friends on the second floor balconies, or through upper-floor windows into watch parties. The parade was shorter — 30 minutes vs. the Incas’ hour — but the floats and the throws and the bands were just as good.

King Cake Crawl

Our Mardi Gras trips have built an appreciation not just for parades, but also for king cakes. A king cake is a yeasted dough cake, often braided in a ring, traditionally filled with cinnamon sugar, and topped with a glaze or icing and sprinkled with sugar in Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold.

I got hooked on king cakes when traveling to New Orleans back in my consulting days. The project team would usually stay at the Sheraton on Canal Street, and every morning during Mardi Gras, there’d be a king cake in the concierge lounge breakfast spread. When Irene would join me, we’d leave the concierge cakes behind and troll the neighborhoods to find the best and/or most unique king cakes. 

Sunday, we drove back over the bay to Mobile in the rain — our first day of bad weather. I-10 and US 98 run right next to each other across the top of Mobile Bay. I-10 is more of a causeway while US 98 touches down and skips across the just-above-water-line islands of sediment left behind as the Mobile River and the other rivers feed into the bay. We took US 98 this time so we could drive by the USS Alabama battleship, swerve the parade barricades, and hit Dropout Bakery for what many locals said was the best king cake in Mobile.

We were hopeful, because our tasting notes on a couple of East Bay king cake slices were “weirdly flat” and “not bad….” So, not great. We found Dropout tucked away in the corner of an incubator/co-working space. No seating, so we walked our boxed cake a block over to a coffee joint and there cut into the perfectly sized two-person king cake — and got what we were looking for. It looked great; it tasted great; it made the walk in the rain worth it.

Packing Up

Next Stop: Gulf Coast Mardi Gras Road Trip Stop 2 — New Orleans

Recommendations for Mobile and East Bay

Mobile

• Dropout Bakery, 358 St Louis St, Mobile — One of the best king cakes of the trip
• Nova Espresso, 306 St Anthony St, Mobile — Great place to eat your Dropout Bakery purchases
• Braided River Brewing Company, 420 St Louis St, Mobile — The best taproom I visited this stop

East Bay

• Kitchen On Main, 1716 Main St, Daphne — Cozy, friendly neighborhood restaurant
• Pearl, 334 Fairhope Ave, Fairhope — Local oysters, gumbo, and a good craft beer selection

Following Up

Thanks to everyone for the “Welcome Back!” replies on the website and socials to my first return post. As I said on Instagram, the key will be getting this post out on time. I’ve managed that, and so on to getting the next one out. 

Debbie Trueblood commented on the website — “So nice to see you back. And yes, I read your post in “your voice”!” Which gave me an idea — maybe I should feed some past episodes into an AI to generate my own TravelCommons voice model that could be used as an option to read aloud these posts. This AI stuff just keeps getting whackier.

If you’ve hit the TravelCommons website, you’ve noticed it looks a lot different, a lot simpler, and a lot faster. I was forced into the change when a security upgrade broke the old template. So, speaking of AI, I spent a couple of nights vibe-coding the basics of a new WordPress template that now drives the website.  But still on the to-do list — links to the socials, search functionality, a Destinations section to consolidate location content — so stay tuned. It’s a bit of a construction zone.

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