Gulf Shores, Alabama: Sunshine, Seafood & Great Golf – Now Just One Easy Flight Away

Over the past six or seven years, Gulf Shores Alabama has become a regular mainstay on the list of favorite Seifert family vacation destinations.

From its beautiful white sand beaches to delectable fresh seafood and – yes, excellent golf experiences – it’s also a warm weather favorite for many other Wisconsin families.

Our one complaint, though, has always been the long travel. Getting to the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area always required connecting flights… or an arduous 16-hour drive.

That’s changed.

Allegiant Air Simplifies Gulf Shores Travel

With Appleton International Airport (ATW) now offering direct flights to and from Gulf Shores International Airport (GUF) via Allegiant Air, Wisconsinites can now travel quickly and conveniently, deplaning just ten minutes from the beach and the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area’s main drag.

What’s maybe even better is that this vacation no longer requires travelers to spend hours in long security lines at gargantuan airports like O’Hare, Hartsfield-Jackson or St. Louis Lambert, but rather to enjoy an efficient, satisfying air travel experience in terminals with limited gates – and in the case of Gulf Shores, just one!

Flying out of Appleton, you’ll park your car 50 feet from the airport’s front entrance, hand your keys off at the parking kiosk inside and simply head to your gate. You’ll just need to text when you’re back to have your car delivered out front.

And when you arrive in Gulf Shores you’re welcomed within 30 feet by the rental car counter, and on the other side of their one room the baggage claim. Once you get your car keys (which took us less than 10 minutes) it’s just a few-hundred-foot walk to the rental.

From there, you’re on vacation. It’s like hitting an easy button 🟢

Gulf Shores is finally quick and convenient – the way frequent flyers wish all travel could be.

Flying Allegiant Air

I’ll admit it – I was hesitant to fly Allegiant Air at first, until a conversation with a client of mine changed my perspective.

“I love Allegiant,” Brian told me, “they fly to all the smaller airports I’d otherwise need connections for, and it’s always really convenient.”

“What about the ticky-tacky fees?” I asked.

“They’ve never been unreasonable with me.”

That ended up being our experience, as well. Our round-trip flights were incredibly affordable at right around $300 apiece, and the only real add-on to consider was luggage. Allegiant includes a personal item and carry-on with their basic fare, but checked bags do cost extra – $36 if paid in advance or $75 at the airport. Once we understood that upfront, there were no surprises.

I’ll be honest, I half-expected them to be waiting at the gate with a tape measure ready to ding us for oversized carry-ons. That never happened. In fact, the entire process was smooth and stress-free, and the flight staff could not have been friendlier or more helpful.

The only mildly “salesy” moment came during the in-flight credit card pitch, and food and drinks are available for purchase if you want them. No big deal for us. On a two hour and 40 minute flight, we were perfectly content with the snacks and drinks we picked up at the gate.

Bottom line – Allegiant delivered exactly what we hoped for: an affordable, easy and genuinely pleasant way to get our family from Wisconsin to the beach without the usual travel headaches. Again, zero complaints on our end.

The Small Airport Travel Experience

What really elevates flying Allegiant from Appleton to Gulf Shores isn’t just the affordability or convenience of the flight itself – it’s the entire small-airport experience on both ends of the journey.

For so many years, I’ve flown almost exclusively out of major airports: Milwaukee, Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, Dallas, Orlando, Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, Detroit, Salt Lake City and more. I’ve simply grown accustomed to assuming air travel will be a major production, which is why I’ve always built in at least an hour and a half just to navigate security lines, long terminal walks and crowded gates.

When flying out of Appleton (ATW) or into Gulf Shores (GUF), none of that exists. Appleton is obviously the larger of the two, but even there it’s a short walk, a simple security checkpoint and a laid-back atmosphere from curb to gate.

Appleton International has also seen some excellent recent updates, now offering dining options like Fratello’s and even a new Biergarten for those who want to kickstart their vacation early. The seating is incredibly comfortable and the overall environment feels relaxed rather than rushed.

One small note for travelers: because of the small-airport setup, passengers aren’t allowed to check in at the ticket counter until two hours before departure. Trust me, you won’t need to be there that early – an hour before takeoff is more than sufficient.

Tried & True Lodging in the Gulf Shores

We’ve stayed at a variety of different places while visiting the Gulf Shores, and there are three key things to consider:

• Location
• Rooms
• Amenities

I put location as number one, and if you ask me Southern Sands Gulf Shores has as good a location as any lodging in all the region.

Our condo for the week, room 303, had two bedrooms (one queen-sized bed and the second bedroom with two twins for the kids), two bathrooms with showers and a Jacuzzi tub. The room had a nicely updated kitchen, comfortable living space, a balcony overlooking the pool and ocean, a boardwalk to the beach and was located across from the laundry on the third floor. It had everything a family of four like us could need.

Here’s a great view of the sunrise during our first morning at Southern Sands (before leaving to photograph Peninsula Golf & Racquet Club):

If you’re looking for super-high-end luxury, of course, the most top-of-the-line place I’ve stayed at in the Gulf Shores was the Turquoise Place in Orange Beach. While visiting in 2015 with my buddies, we stayed in a 3,500-square-foot condo (plus a 1,000-square-foot balcony with a hot tub) on the ninth floor overlooking the ocean. That may have been the nicest place I’ve ever stayed in my life.

Another great option, but without as much of the “location” factor as Southern Sands, was our home-away-from-home for our 2022 family trip: The Beach Club. Situated next door to Kiva Dunes on the Fort Morgan Peninsula we really enjoyed our stay at The Beach Club, as well, but it was a 20-plus minute drive to get to downtown Gulf Shores and all the restaurants and action.

We loved being able to walk everywhere during this trip while staying at Southern Sands, especially because it allowed Kelly and me to get a little more loose and not worry about having one too many glasses of wine or bushwackers to drive back with the kids.

There are dozens of great restaurants within walking distance, including a few we checked out during this vacation like DeSoto’s

Things to do in the Gulf Shores

If you’re like many Wisconsinites, you’ve spent your fair share of time in Alabama’s Gulf Shores. I remember the last time we were there (linked in the article below) we could barely avoid other Wisconsin vacationers during Spring Break. It’s certainly one of our hot spots and for good reason.

The area offers so much. From fresh, affordable seafood to beachgoing and golf, nobody should have a problem finding ways to stay busy during a week-long vacation to this beautiful panhandle locale.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Golf

Kiva Dunes Golf Club

My favorite of the Gulf Shores area’s golf properties, Kiva Dunes offers world-class golf in a relaxed, seaside setting.

I’ve spent time at Kiva Dunes in the past, and it was just as great as I remembered this year. What made it even better, though, was getting to play it with my son, Charlie.

My dream is to someday be able to go on family golf trips where at least one of the kids will always play with me while Kelly enjoys the hotel, spa or other amenities and area attractions. That’s all starting to come together over the past year as Charlie, who just finished his fifth season of junior golf at North Hills Country Club, has started getting more excited about hitting the links with his dad.

It can be intimidating going into a round of golf with a young kid at a high-end golf course, but Kiva Dunes’ staff could not have been better about it. When they loaded up our clubs and we visited the pro shop they all gave him high-fives and chatted with him, and when we got back out to the cart they’d left him a bunch of colored golf balls to use. The starter and others even visited us at the range to see him swing and give him good vibes. He ate it up.

Getting out on the course, too, he was smacking the ball! Ever since we played in the US Kids Junior/Parent Golf Tournament at Eagle Springs this past August, he’s been obsessed with getting his shots recorded on Smooth Swing. And every time the camera’s rolling he hits it well – I wish I could say the same, but if you keep up with my “On the Course” Instagram stories you probably already know that’s not the case.

Designed by Jerry Pate, a former US Open champion and eight-time winner on the PGA Tour, Kiva Dunes is a seaside dreamscape. It’s sandy and windswept with beautiful water features, excellent greens complexes and an everpresent wind – gusts well into the 20’s while we played, which made for plenty of fun – and not-so-fun – tee shots.

Pate’s greens are large and undulating here – as I discuss in my 2022 article on it (linked below), they actually remind me a lot of Langford/Moreau greens with their clever bunker placements, subtly severe slopes and steep outer embankments. It’s a design I could never get tired of.

For more on Kiva Dunes Golf Club, check out my article on it from 2022: Links-Style Golf in Gulf Shores:

Peninsula Golf & Racquet Club

Peninsula has the best greens in the Gulf Shores. There, I said it.

Recently regrassed with TifEagle across their 27 holes, the greens complexes at Peninsula are heavily contoured and incredibly smooth. They were perfect to roll on and my friend, Easton, and I enjoyed an ideal pace of play during our afternoon round.

With 27 holes between the Lakes, Marsh and Cypress nines, Peninsula allows golf enthusiasts to spend a big day on the course while in Gulf Shores playing country club quality conditions with a really nice variety of holes.

Set on over 800 acres of the Fort Morgan Peninsula, between Bon Secour Bay and Little Lagoon, Peninsula Golf & Racquet Club is a gorgeous property with three distinct nines, interesting hole designs and impeccable conditions. The one thing I wish it had is more beautiful views of the water – the detreed vistas on the eighth hole of the Lakes Course gives players a great understanding of what that could look like if more tree removal was done.

While much of the course is inland from the coastline, there are a few areas that would really shine.

The Lakes eighth is a fantastic golf hole, teeing off from near the shore with a left-to-right dogleg that benefits players who can fade their drives. From there, a set of ponds and bunkers dot the approach area of the fairway and require skilled long shots for a chance to get home in regulation.

Every view and angle of this hole is awesome, and with its well-designed greens complex, run-offs and internal contouring, it plays beautifully, too.

Just behind Kiva Dunes, Peninsula is my second favorite golf course in the Gulf Shores area – combined with an excellent food and beverage program, its private club-like conditions are always such a treat to play.

For more on the Peninsula Golf & Racquet Club, check out my 2015 course review, linked below:

Dining

One of the things I always get most excited about when visiting the Gulf Shores is the food.

I am a huge seafood lover, and this area’s seafood scene is second to none.

From fresh fish to crab claws, crablegs and lobster, mussels, clams, oysters and… maybe the highlight of them all, royal reds (gigantic deepwater shrimps), we always eat from the sea when we visit the Gulf Shores of Alabama. This trip was no different, enjoying three new-to-us restaurants where I was able to get southern seafood platters that let me indulge in excessive amounts of fantastic fish and shellfish with all the drawn butter I could ask for.

My favorite of our meals was one I didn’t completely expect: The Steamer & Baked Oyster Bar. Within walking distance of our condo at Southern Sands, The Steamer checks off all the boxes for me: Fresh, delicious seafood with excessive amounts of salted butter, large portions, huge roles of paper towel to clean my hands, bushwackers (it was the 50th anniversary of the bushwacker ice cream drink while we were there, by the way), casual seating and great pricing. I would eat here again in an instant next time we visit!

We also had terrific seafood meals at Tacky Jack’s with Easton after getting into town the first night (loved the Steamed Reds entree), and then at DeSoto’s Seafood Kitchen the night before we left – again, an easy five-minute walk from our condo.

Another thing that’s always important to the Seifert family when on vacation is breakfast food. While I’m typically out photographing golf courses in the morning, Kelly always needs a solid coffee option and the kids have to get their donuts.

Kelly fell in love with the Beach Girl coffee drive-up last time we visited, and this time branched out for donuts to check out both Parlor and Lickin’ Good Donuts. Both were fabulous, especially the first day when we got Parlor Doughnuts that were still warm and fresh – the doughnut holes were incredible with my personal favorites being filled with raspberry jelly. They also had really good iced coffee. Lickin’ Good was our kids’ favorite (they had more of a conventional doughnut menu), but they did not have coffee for delivery – just so you can plan accordingly.

The Beach

Highlighting the Gulf Shores area is a pristine white-sand beach that stretches for miles. Similar to the beaches we frequent on 30A in Florida (which is 2-1/2 hours east across the panhandle), the waves are calm, the water is crystal clear with a wonderful aqua tint and the sand is powdery soft and pearl white.

It’s great “digging sand,” as Charlie would say, leading to his daily excursions to create holes big enough to almost cover himself and Quinn up in.

The winds were howling during this visit, and with temperatures in the low- to mid-70s it was fringe beach weather. That didn’t matter as we spent all the time we could enjoying the sand, searching for sand dollars and seashells, crashing in the waves and, of course, throwing the football (although our second-to-last day was tough to throw in for Charlie because of the wind). It was heaven.

Other activities

When on vacation as a family we like to spend as much time during the day at the beach or pool as possible. My kids love to play in the waves, and Charlie especially can’t go a minute without throwing and catching something. When at the ocean that something is typically a football. It’s honestly not often we’re not out in the sun (or on a golf course, obviously) on warm-climate vacations, but sometimes we’re forced to.

The last day of our vacation was not at all what we’d hoped for, but we made the best of it. With our flight scheduled for 7 pm out of Gulf Shores, we woke up to monsoon-like storms with heavy winds, torrential rain and light flooding. The sun never came out and so our last day that we hoped to spend exploring more turned into a nearly full day of looking for things to do.

We spent hours at book stores, exploring the Orange Beach and Gulf Shores area (we’d literally drive, in the heavy rain, down roads for 45 minutes at a time), went mini-golfing at Jurassic Golf and had lunch at Bleu’s Burger.

Jurassic Golf was a cool experience in and by itself, especially because it was Quinn and Kelly’s only opportunity to play any golf during our trip.

I guess if you’re looking for a downfall to convenient travel it’s that: it doesn’t take long to get to the airport (12 minutes from our condo), dropping off the rental car took no time at all, the security line was fast and it was a 50-foot walk to our gate. While that will certainly help your time spent on vacation when the weather is nice, it certainly doesn’t provide time to waste while it’s terribly inclement!

Still, as always when visiting the Gulf Shores, there won’t be anything we don’t look back on with anything but good memories.

Book your Easy Gulf Shores vacation today!

What keeps us coming back to the Gulf Shores isn’t just the sunshine or the seafood or the soft white sand. It’s how seamlessly everything comes together. You can wake up to a sunrise over the Gulf, play a championship-caliber round at Kiva Dunes or Peninsula, walk to dinner and end the night listening to waves roll in. It’s the kind of balance that makes a vacation feel full without ever feeling busy.

Now, with travel from Wisconsin finally made easy through Allegiant Air, the region’s best strengths shine even brighter. Quick flights, short walks through tiny terminals and effortless arrivals mean more time where it matters – on the beach, at the table and exploring everything that makes this place unforgettable.

For our family, this trip reaffirmed why the Gulf Shores remains one of our go-to warm-weather escapes. It’s comfortable, it’s convenient and it has something for each of us. And every time we leave, we’re already thinking about the next time we’ll touch down on that powder-white sand.

What are you waiting for? Start planning your trip to Gulf Shores through Allegiant Air today!

For more great Gulf Shores and Orange Beach vacation ideas, check out Visit Alabama’s Beaches’ website, linked below:

To read all about our previous visit in 2022, check out my past articles about “The Gulf Coast Road Trip” and “Part 1: Gulf Shores,” also linked below: