Daily Archives: August 13, 2015
Gumbo . . .
We reluctantly pulled out of our site at the Gulf State Park a little after 8:30 this morning. I say ‘reluctantly’ because we always really enjoy our stay here and it’s never long enough.
For me it’s like coming home, since I lived here from the time I was two until I was thirteen and we moved to Colombia, South America, When we moved to Gulf Shores in January 1951 and my parents opened their motel, the main beach road had only been paved for about six months. There was one restaurant, four motels, and a lot of empty beach.
I used to know every building, and every family here. Now there are so many condos and multi-story hotels that it’s hard to get my bearings.
They say you can’t go home again, but it’s always fun trying in Gulf Shores.
We got hitched up in one of those semi-circle pull-thru’s they have here and headed out for one last drive along the beach road a little before 9. And by 10am we were turning onto the I-10 washboard and headed west.
On a quick segue, who is this guy and why is he on every billboard in Alabama.
Well, almost every one.
We started to see his billboards up in north Alabama, and saw them all the way down to Gulf Shores. I have never seen so many billboards for one thing.
In some cases he has billboards opposite each other on both sides of the road. In other cases, you will be passing one billboard and you can already see the next one further down the road. One time I counted 10 billboards in a 5 mile stretch.
I can only imagine how much he spent on this media buy. I guess he’s hoping for a lot of accidents.
We pulled into Poche’s RV Park right at 3pm and got set up in our usual site. They have several corner pull-thru’s reserved for over-nighters right on the lake with a really nice view.
About 4:30 we headed out to have dinner at Pont Breaux nee Mulate’s. We’ve eaten here for about 30 years, mostly just for one thing, the gumbo.
Their gumbo here is the standard against which all other gumbos are measured. The only other gumbo that equals it is at Floyd’s Cajun Seafood in Webster, TX. And that’s probably because the ‘Floyd’ in question is Floyd Landry, one of the brothers who started the Landry’s Restaurants chain before they sold it off.
Note two things here. It comes with potato salad, and the gumbo looks kind of green.
The potato salad is one of those regional things you find around the country, like some areas put cole slaw on their pulled pork BBQ sandwiches. In fact some places serve their gumbo with the scoop of potato salad already in the bowl.
Different strokes, and all that.
And the gumbo has a green tint because of the filé powder I sprinkled on it, because you can’t have real gumbo without filé.
For dessert we had our usual Bread Pudding with Vanilla Rum Sauce.
I don’t think they cook all the rum out, or maybe they add more rum afterwards, but the sauce has a little kick to it. Really good.
Tomorrow we’ve got another 300 mile run, this time to the Colorado River Thousand Trails west of Houston in Columbus, TX. Really looking forward to seeing the kids and grandkids again.
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Thought for the Day:
One half of all people have below average IQ. In the US the number is 54%.
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