Last weekend we made a swing down to the Gulf of Mexico. After the last several weeks at home, we agreed it felt good to pile back in our van, the Moon Pie, and hit the road again. For Darren, our new papa, this was the first break from shared diaper duty since Chloe’s arrival.

Friday we played the Funky Blues Shack  in a Disney-like gated community of shops and restaurants called the Village at Baytowne Wharf in Sandestin, Florida. The guard let us in even though we didn’t have a band pass, something we never heard of before or since but seemed important to him. A lot of the women wore dresses and heels. Once they had a few drinks they all started pointing at each other, a dance trend we’ve noticed recently. We saw some old friends, made some new ones, and generally had a great time. Here’s a photo of the load-out:

Saturday we drove to Josephine, Alabama, which as far as I can tell consists of one place called the Pirate’s Cove. I heard someone say, “You get all kinds of people here, rich and poor, even dogs and snakes.” I think he was exaggerating. With all those dogs running around, no snake with half a brain would come anywhere near Pirate’s Cove.

Pirate’s Cove sits on a sandy beach across Perdido Bay from the Pensacola skyline. A lot of the people don’t drive home at the end of the night but sleep on boats docked behind the bar. One woman told me, “I’ve been coming here all my life, and I was 33 years old before I learned there was a road to this place.”

When I returned to the stage after our intermission, here’s what I found:

It’s easy to make new friends in Josephine. One even tried to come home with us: