The 35th annual National Shrimp Festival takes place today through Sunday. The National Shrimp Festival is of the country's premier outdoor festivals. The festival features an international marketplace where over 300 vendors will show and offer fine art, arts and crafts, and all manner of shrimp.
Yes, shrimp! Fried, grilled, broiled or steamed, any way you like it, and every way you'll love it. You will find it all at the festival along with other delicious seafood and non seafood dishes.
The 35th National Shrimp Festival takes place at the Gulf Shores Alabama Public Beach.
Shrimp festival opens today; huge crowds expected
Gulf Shores, AL – October 2006 – Southern Breeze magazine announced that a variety of boutique wines will be offered at its Grand Wine Tasting Event on Saturday, October 21st, in Rosemary Beach, Fla. Wine experts from around the world – led by Ted Egan, a renowned Napa Valley boutique winemaker from Bourassa Vineyards – will pour more than 150 boutique wines. As an exclusive to our guests, winemaker Robert Pecota will be pouring a small production of handcrafted wines from his family-owned vineyard near Calistoga, CA.
The setting for Saturday’s event will be Rosemary’s Long Green Park, an exquisite open-air space surrounded by the community’s rich architecture, just steps from white-sand beaches. Attendees can sample new vintages, learn from the experts and even purchase their favorites to take home.
Mark your calendar. This year's Alabama Coastal BirdFest promises to be the biggest and best ever.
The 2006 Alabama Coastal BirdFest takes place the weekend of October 19-22. This year’s BirdFest will include nearly 20 great tours to prime birding spots on the 240-mile long Alabama Coastal Birding Trail. There will be two exciting evening events plus a free day-long Bird & Conservation Expo.
This year we are repeating some of our most popular tours from past festivals, and adding something new. We have three new tours to Dauphin Island that include an excursion on Mobile Bay on the Dauphin Island Sea Lab research vessel, the A.E. Verrill, a 65-foot ocean-going craft. Not only will we see the birds of Mobile Bay, but marine biologists from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab will be with us to examine specimens caught in a trawl. - John Borom, president of Mobile Bay Audubon Society
At BirdFest’s opening night reception on Thursday, Oct. 19th, a panel of three distinguished ornithologists will discuss Hurricanes & Habitat: How Wildlife Survives. The panel includes
Registration for the 2006 Alabama Coastal BirdFest is now open.
What a summer it's been. After last year's storms and the predictions for an even worse season this year we're all breathing a huge sigh of relief to have seen nothing of the sort.
In fact things could hardly be better.
It looks like we'll all be headed out to the Alabama Gulf Coast this weekend, the last hurrah for summer vacation 2006. If you're among them, don't go without checking ahead for lodging. Just about every condo in the system is booked up solid for the weekend. There may be the odd hotel room here and there. Don't give up. The beach is calling.
Coastal communities look for big Labor Day weekend business
With Tropical Storm Ernesto no longer a local threat, tourism officials in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach said they expect big crowds this holiday weekend, hopefully helping offset last year's Labor Day, when Hurricane Katrina turned Alabama's beaches into virtual ghost towns.
As Ernesto churned in the Caribbean last weekend, and early projections called for it to smash the Gulf Coast, officials feared the worst.
Once the storm weakened and shifted east over Florida, it signaled good news for the Alabama coast, a region that missed out on the traditional end of summer bonanza last year.
"We all breathed a little sigh of relief," said Marie Curran, the director of marketing and reservations for Brett/Robinson, a real estate conglomerate that manages more than 1,500 rental units.
"We hate to see the hurricane go anywhere, but we're happy it's not going in this direction. I think that's a common thought along the Gulf Coast."
Curran said all of the real estate conglomerate's 1,856 condo units are booked for this weekend.
The 12th Annual BayFest Music Festival is sure to delight music lovers this fall. The festival, to be held October 6-8, 2006 will feature artists Lynyrd Skynyrd, Al Green, Michael Bolton, Gretchen Wilson, Patti LaBelle, Little Big Town, Charlie Wilson, Gary Allan, Shinedown and Keith Anderson.
But that's just for starters. BayFest will host over 100 national, regional and local artists who will perform on nine separate stages over the three-day weekend.
You can get your weekend pass for BayFest on their web site. After Labor Day tickets will be available at area Compass, Regions, and AmSouth banks. Full weekend passes are $35. Single day passes are $25, and can be purchased at the gate. Children under 12 get in free when accompanied by a ticket-holding adult.
As expected, Alabama's Gulf Shores beaches were busy and crowded over the extended Fourth of July weekend. Business owners had been anticipating a flood of visitors and vacationers to Gulf Shores establishments. And business was indeed brisk and heavy, but not quite up to full capacity.
Tourists line beaches, but not businesses
A beach umbrella shading them from the hot noon Independence Day sun, David and Toni Benoit of New Orleans watched their two sons, Stefan and Corey, ride skim boards up and down the Baldwin shore.
New Orleans residents who moved back to their home in January for the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, the Benoits took advantage of the holiday and a condo in Gulf Shores to escape to a quiet spot on Orange Beach, near the Flora-Bama Lounge.