Gulf Shores, Alabama: Thanksgiving 2021

My original Thanksgiving 2021 plan was to hie myself to Lafayette for a splendid weekend of live music and dance and reunions with old acquaintances. 

 

 

Until my rational brain kicked in. Hold on there, Mzuri. There are too many folks in the Lafayette dance community who disdain the vaccines and masks AND who likely will have like-minded family members coming in from around the country to visit. And you've got a trip to New York City planned with one of your descendants in mid-January, which you do not want to fuck up with illness after already waiting so long to make this trip because of, you know, the pandemic that just won't leave. 

So I decided to stay local for Thanksgiving. 

I went to the beach! I chose Gulf Shores. 

Gulf Shores Alabama 10th Street Beach. Thanksgiving 2021.

'twas a gloriously sunny day, with fine music from my playlist on the drive down, and a pleasurable coffee surprise at a CEFCO. Bourbon pecan. Would that taste good? Well, it has the word 'pecan' innit, so it must be good. And who cares that I'd already had my usual coffee rations for the day. Or that it was already the afternoon, generally past my time to indulge. It was Thanksgiving! Do it! I did, and it was grand. 

 

Bourbon pecan coffee at CEFCO, Alabama. Thanksgiving 2021.

 

Sugary, putty-white sand. 

A lil rollicking wave action. 

Other people there, but not a crowd. 

Many black shells; rather elegant. 

 

Gulf Shores Alabama shells Thanksgiving

 

 

Gulf Shores shells Alabama. Thanksgiving 2021.

 

It was just right. 

I did have sweet potatoes on The Day, too, so it was all Thanksgivinny.

Nomadic Thanksgivings

I marvel a bit at my Thanksgivings since I went rootless in 2010. 

In 2010, amazingly, I was in Playa del Carmen, Quintano Roo, Mexico. At a jazz festival! A brother and our mother had come down to spend time with me. One of the highlights: 

"...terrific music, a gorgeous orange moon that hung from a cloud, a starry sky, fresh breezes, warm sand..."

Eugenia Leon band, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010.

In 2011, on a layover en route from Caucasus Georgia to Missouri, I was at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. An excerpt: 

"Istanbul's Ataturk Airport ... reminds me of one of the original Star Wars movies where our heroes go into a bar that's filled with beings from all over the universe, with huge variances in how they look and behave.

"A better descriptor is that the Ataturk Airport is just a modern-day version of a stop on the ancient Silk Road, where Europe, the Asias, and Africa intersected at a daily bazaar of color, language, clothing, food, drink, and custom."

 

Layover at Ataturk Airport, Istanbul, Turkey. November 2011.

 

Note: Ten years later, I still use that backpack. It is my portable office when I'm on the road.

In 2013, I had landed only recently in Lafayette, Louisiana. An excerpt: 

I’m in a new place, now in Louisiana. Still building my nest, so there’s that as-yet unsettled feeling, but in the main, as I walk down one of my new streets, I have to stop sometimes and look around and wonder at the pleasure of it. Not just being here in Louisiana, but the experience of New Mexico, of Caucasus Georgia, of Ethiopia, of Playa.

There is wonder, too, at the deep benefits of technology that allow family and friends to connect on important days of the year, despite the physical miles that are between them.

 A simple day today.

At home, ate some roast chicken, sweet potatoes, and pumpernickel toast. Drank pumpkin spice coffee. Listened to some trance-inducing, bone-reverberating music from Tinarawen.

 

In 2016, I did one of my favorite things - go to a big parade! In El Paso here, here, and here. It was a big parade. 

 

El Paso Thanksgiving Parade 2016

 

I spent 2017 Thanksgiving in Missouri with my mother, two siblings, and a niece along the Ozark Scenic Riverways. Echo Bluffs State Park was our base. An excerpt: 

There is a herd of wild horses at Echo Bluffs. The horses wander through the campsites at will. They poop there, too. Under normal circumstances, this might be an annoyance, but it's wild horse poop, so it has some panache.

Wild horse, Echo Bluffs State Park, Missouri. November 2017.

Thanksgiving 2018 found me in Mexico City, where I spent a month at a guesthouse that welcomed tourists like me, academics doing research in Mexico, and at times, like when I was there, refugees. While Trump spewed his pus-filled rhetoric about the members of the caravans coming up from Central America, I broke bread with some of those nefarious "criminals" from Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. An excerpt: 

A young woman from Honduras, [a refugee] from one of the caravans, will give birth in about two weeks. Where? She does not know. She and her husband have a cheeky, chortling one year-old who loves to kick a ball in our community room. Can you even imagine what would prompt a young couple with a small child and another due, to leave everything they know behind, to walk into an uncertain future?

On Thanksgiving, a group of us from the guesthouse - tourists like me, guesthouse volunteers and staff, and refugees - attended a theatrical performance. That was pleasant, yet not as memorable as the chicken soup that the Salvadorean men shared with me one day at lunch.

 

Salvadorean chicken soup for lunch, Mexico City. November 2018.

In 2019, with the COVID an alarm not yet sounded, I was on the road to Texas from Tucson. Missions: Become a Texan + test out ChezP as a "caRVee," as I'd be overnighting at an interstate rest area for the first time. An excerpt about the Thanksgiving Day leg of the trip: 

I left Tucson early Thanksgiving morning, amidst dire weather warnings swirling about the nation. I'd kept my thumb on the forecasts for my route, and for the most part, it looked cloudy, yet dryish.

Although my drive began dry as I left Tucson, much of the first day was a tense slog through light and middlin' rain.

No matter. Such things are like painful labor and delivery - a bitch during the process, but the moment one arrives at one's destination, all is forgotten in the delight of a journey safely made.

Texas-I-10 EB Pecos West Rest Area near Ft Stockton. Thanksgiving 2019.

Last year, in 2020, I packed a car-picnic lunch and went for a hike at Tannehill Ironworks Historical Park, in which is the southernmost terminus of the Appalachian Trail, as pronounced by a road-hugging sign. An excerpt:

Alabama does not like shoulders: I walked carefully to the sign after I parked my car in the lot beyond the fee booth. I walked carefully because Alabama disdains shoulders, and maybe pedestrians, too: If we wanted y'all to walk on the road, we'd'a built y'all some shoulders!

Appalachian Trail Terminus, Tannehill Historical State Park, Alabama. Thanksgiving 2020.

Alabama: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 888: Thanksgiving on the Appalachian Tail

 

Yes, that's Tail, not Trail. 

 

Appalachian Mountains terminus, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

The southernmost tip of the Appalachian Mountain range

It delights me that I can stand at the tail end of the Appalachian Mountain range in my current state of Alabama. Doing so became my mission for Thanksgiving 2020 in the Year of Our Corona.

Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park is where it happens - or happened, in geological terms.

The park hopped with Thanksgiving visitors seeking a holiday respite from COVID, as evidenced by the line of cars that preceded and followed me on the entrance road.

It befuddled me that I passed this Appalachian Mountain range sign on my way to the park entrance booth. As I drove by it, I thought, Wait! Was that it?! What? No, of course not. Surely, not.  

No, I imagined, the "real" marker is in the park proper, where you and your posse can take a group photo showing y'all have Been There. 

Or you (actually, me) can simply stand at various points relative to the sign and contemplate the grandeur of the Appalachians and how one is actually at the southernmost tip of them. It would be akin to standing on the southernmost tip of Argentina, in Tierra del Fuego, on the above-water foot of the Andes, though admittedly not as sexy. 

But I was wrong; the roadside sign was the marker. 

Alabama does not like shoulders

I walked carefully to the sign after I parked my car in the lot beyond the fee booth. I walked carefully because Alabama disdains shoulders, and maybe pedestrians, too: If we wanted y'all to walk on the road, we'd'a built y'all some shoulders!

Alabama's shoulder issue first confronted me when I visited Oxford, Alabama, in July, and I attempted to walk alongside a road near my motel. Not being ready to bite the dust literally or figuratively that day, I abandoned my attempt soon after I began, hoping I wouldn't die during my retreat. 

If you think that Alabama might set aside its shoulder prejudice to accommodate an Important Marker in a state park (a park, for fuck's sake!), you would be wrong. Nope, the marker is on the relatively-busy entrance to the park, with so little room for a pedestrian to maneuver safely, that one must wonder if the sign's use of the words terminus and end carry any special significance.

A check into Alabama's pedestrian death rate revealed that in 2018, Alabama had the 12th highest pedestrian death rate in the US. This analysis placed it even higher.

Appalachian Mountains terminus, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

 

Mushrooms

In another Alabama surprise (its prettiness being the first, and its antipathy toward shoulders being the second), it appears that mushrooms might be my Alabama "thing." In New Mexico, it was sonic booms and tarantulas. In Arizona, it was lizards. 

While I do adore mushrooms for their sexy, earthy umami-ness, my knowledge of wild mushrooms is low. I know a morel when I see one, but anyone can do that.

In wandering some of Tannehill's trails, I encountered three mushroom types. 

 First I found a giant white that sat on a fat pedestal. 

Mushrooms, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

Later, a yellow mushroom bottom, textured like a tasty English muffin, beamed sunnily at me from the leafy, woodland floor. I tipped it over to reveal a reddish cap. 

Mushrooms, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

Mushrooms, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

Finally, a gaggle of green scalloped shells clung to a tree next to a pretty ledge. 

 

Mushrooms, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

Mushrooms, Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

COVID detritus

Sadly, I saw two pale yellow paper masks at one of the trailheads. I had nothing to pick them up with other than my bare hands, and I left them lay. I will consider taking a bag and gloves with me in future walks so I can pick up trash like this. 

COVID mask at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

Pumpkins in the stream

Odd. A story there? 

 

Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, McCalla, Alabama. November 2020.

 

 A park is a good place to spend Thanksgiving. 

 

Thanksgivings from my rootless past: 

• 2019 on the road: Road Trip: Livingston, TX: First Night Boondocking
• 2017 in Missouri: Ozark Scenic Riverways
  
• 2016 in El Paso: The Thanksgiving Parade
• 2013 in South Louisiana: Louisiana Thanksgiving
  
• 2011 in Istanbul: To Home for Winter Vacation
  
• 2010 in Playa del Carmen: Thanksgiving in Playa

  

Below is a slide show of my visit to Tannehill Ironworks Historical Park:

El Paso: The [Insert Corporate Sponsor Here] Parade, Part 1

Thanksgiving Parade 2016, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

El Paso has a huge parade on Thanksgiving. Under normal circumstances, I would call it El Paso's Thanksgiving Parade, but that's not what it is. Although, to be fair, it's not what it's not, either.

The official name is the First Light Federal Credit Union Sun Bowl Parade [Brought to You on Thanksgiving Day, oh right, and in El Paso].  Sometimes called the Sun Bowl Parade for short, even though the Sun Bowl is a month after the parade.

The above caused me no end of consternation when I arrived, trying to find the connection between the Sun Bowl (which actually occurs in December), and the Parade Not Called Thanksgiving But Which Happens on Thanksgiving. Because I intended to go, I wanted to be sure to go on the right date and the right place.

Once I got things sorted, I was ready to go! And it was a marvel to be within walking distance of such a huge event (some sources say a quarter of a million people attend the parade), so no parking logistics to worry about.

Thanksgiving Parade 2016, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

It was a big parade, so I'm going to roll it out over several posts.

Below a video of one of the opening units:

Henceforward, I'll refer to it as the El Paso Thanksgiving Parade, as it should be. 

Thanksgiving Parade 2016, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

Louisiana: Thanksgiving

In 2010, I spent Thanksgiving in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, where I was taking a CELTA course. A beautiful day, with a visit from my mother and Brother3, the jazz festival, a big ol’ orange moon.

In 2011, I was at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, on my way home for a visit to family and friends from Caucasus Georgia. I felt part of the ancient Silk Road there, doing what we humans have been doing in that area for centuries, crossing from here to there or back again for the good and ill reasons we do such things.

In 2012, it looks like I was listening to great music in New Mexico.  

This year, I’m in a new place, now in Louisiana. Still building my nest, so there’s that as-yet unsettled feeling, but in the main, as I walk down one of my new streets, I have to stop sometimes and look around and wonder at the pleasure of it. Not just being here in Louisiana, but the experience of New Mexico, of Caucasus Georgia, of Ethiopia, of Playa. 

There is wonder, too, at the deep benefits of technology that allow family and friends to connect on important days of the year, despite the physical miles that are between them.

A simple day today.

At home, ate some roast chicken, sweet potatoes, and pumpernickel toast. Drank pumpkin spice coffee. Listened to some trance-inducing, bone-reverberating music from Tinarawen. (Thanks to Phil inthe Blank for alerting his readers to this group.) 

In the evening, sipped a Louisiana beer while using the wifi at a local tavern, surrounded by the happy noise of some 60s-70s classic R&B and cheerful talk of other patrons.