Gulf Shores & Orange Beach, Alabama

Alabama's Premier Coastline Community

Gulf Shores and Orange Beach have wonderful, award-winning restaurants, dynamic shopping and exciting events. This little slice of heaven is overflowing with Southern hospitality and features unique attractions like championship golf, nature trails, water sports, and amusement parks. The Gulf Shores and Orange Beach area presents plenty to do for vacationers and residents alike.

Whether you feel like pursuing the thrills and fun of adventure or quiet, lazy days on the beach, you can do it all in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. Slowly meander along the sugar-white sand with your partner’s hand in yours, or listen to your kids scream with laughter and wonder when they catch sight of their first dolphins, leaping and splashing alongside the boat on an awe-inspring dolphin cruise. If you crave a slower sporting experience, cast your line into one of the country’s largest artificial fishing reefs during a deep-sea fishing trip. Or maybe you’d like to relive history and travel back to a time when cannons protected the waterways, then you can come explore the nearly 200-year-old Fort Morgan, located at the western end of Gulf Shores.

This area has a subtropical climate, with bright sunny summers and warm winters. The Alabama Gulf Coast weather offers year-round opportunities for beach-going, fishing, and golfing. Winters are generally mild and residents can enjoy outside activities the majority of the time. Summers are hot, which makes for great beach weather and the sea breeze provides relief from the heat as well as humidity. While the area enjoys a strong “snowbird” season from December to April, many locals say that May/June and October/November are the best months. Ocean surf temperatures are quite warm from May through November, often well into the low 80s.

Fun Times on Alabama's Coast

Things to do in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores, Alabama

Ocean fishing, beaches, boating cruises, and especially golf are major draws for the area. Chartered fishing boats and cruise boats for sunsets, dinner cruises, dolphin watching, and watersports embark regularly, and the area is home to two of the top-rated golf resorts in Alabama – Craft Farms and Kiva Dunes.  Other popular attractions include the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo (as featured in Animal Planet’s “The Little Zoo that Could”);[24] Pelican Place at Craft Farms and Waterville USA, a family amusement/waterpark. The area is home to an annual three-day music festival on the beach each May, the Hangout Music Festival.

Image Attributions

All images are our own or attributed below

Morning at Gulf State Park
By Jodybwiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1976971

Gulf Shores Houses on canal
By Carol M. Highsmith – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID highsm.07400.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15855399

Orange Beach Beach Walkway
By Infrogmation of New Orleans – Photo by Infrogmation (talk) of New Orleans, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10695277

Orange Beach, Alabama
By WeaponizingArchitecture – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115593244