The Lodge at Gulf State Park

Just east along Beach Boulevard, that big handsome building rising up against the dunes on your right is the Lodge at Gulf State Park — and it's a lot more interesting than your average beach hotel.

There's been a lodge on this beach for generations, but the one you're looking at is brand new, opened in 2018, and it exists because the one before it was blown to pieces. Hurricane Ivan flattened the old lodge back in 2004, and for years this spot sat empty. When they finally rebuilt, they decided not to just put up another hotel — they made it a statement. This Lodge is built green and built tough: it earned some of the highest environmental design ratings in the country, it's engineered to stand up to hurricane winds, and the whole thing is meant to show that you can build on a fragile coast responsibly, in a way that heals the dunes instead of bulldozing them.

And here's the part worth chewing on as you drive past: this Lodge, the pier, the nature center up the road, the restored dunes — a huge share of all that was paid for with money from a disaster. When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew out in 2010 and fouled this whole coast, the settlement that followed sent hundreds of millions of dollars back to the Gulf, and Alabama poured its share right here, into rebuilding this park better than before. Boone's got that whole strange redemption story for you later.

Keep rolling east on Beach Boulevard. Up ahead we're going to turn left, north, off the coast highway and up into the green heart of the park.