Most days the median of Bienville Boulevard is just a median, a grassy strip of land dividing the main thoroughfare that runs the inhabited length of Dauphin Island. When a storm pushes a surge up the Gulf it becomes high ground. Inevitably, local social media will carry joking reminders that the road is a no-wake zone.

But on two days a year, including this one at the very start of Mardi Gras season on the Gulf Coast, the median becomes some of the most sought-after real estate on the Gulf Coast. People come early because they have to, to get a spot. How high is demand? High enough that in recent years the town government began laying down some rules. As repeated in the Town Crier newsletter: “… reserving space along the parade route is limited to the day of event (beginning at sunrise) and ropes, ribbons, and other similar materials are not allowed to mark areas …”

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It’s like seeing a warning label on a new ladder that tells you not to climb the ladder while it’s positioned in the back of a moving pickup. You know the point is being brought up only because some truly stupid things have happened and maybe lawyers had to get involved.

But at 10 a.m. on this crisp, sunny Gulf Coast Saturday, everything is congenial. The median, more than two and a half miles of it, is almost 100% occupied. The shoulders of the roadway, where they’re open and flat enough, are likewise filling up fast. People have parked their cars and laid out their tailgating fortifications with the zeal of an invading army establishing a beachhead.

Coolers have been rolled or heaved into position, canopies have been erected, tables have been set up and loaded down with food and beverage. People sit in rings of bag chairs surrounding merry blazes in portable fire pits. Plumes of smoke rise from grills and smokers of every description and waft through the only-on-a-barrier-island mix of pine trees, oak trees and palm trees that grace the median.

At the entry-level end of the barbecue spectrum, there’s a guy who has a pillar of flame rising from the freshly lighted charcoal in a suitcase grill sitting on the hood of his car. Heat is known to rise but even so, one wonders about the impact on the paint job. But no fear: The chef has placed a pack of frozen sausages underneath the grill, so that the surface will be protected as the kielbasas thaw.

At the high end is an industrial-grade grill trailer operated by Frank Morse, the centerpiece of a large roadside gathering of family and friends. “Industrial grade” is not a figure of speech: Morse, aka “Capt. Frank,” is a licensed captain who’s done his share of offshore work. The main cylinder of the grill was once a length of pipe lying unused on the deck of a big derrick barge; a seafaring buddy got permission to carry it off and brought it to Morse in the back of a Ford Ranger. It spent four or five years in Morse’s yard before being welded onto a spare boat trailer and modified with various hatches and grates and vents by a Bayou La Batre fabricator. That was maybe 20 years ago, Morse reckons.

The thing is big, and it is full. Morse catalogs its contents: “I have some breakfast sausage, we have some biscuits, we’ll have biscuits and sausage. I have some beef sausage, I have some brats with cheese in ‘em, I have some chicken breasts that I have split and I have put spinach and cheese in ‘em and wrapped ‘em with bacon. Then I have a pork loin that I fileted out and I stuffed it with cheese and spinach too and then I did a basket-weave pattern with bacon. I’ve got some baby-back ribs here, I have a pork loin that I brined all week long, and I have a beef tenderloin that I marinated in some Italian stuff. My buddy has a pan of cowboy beans there, Bobby Savell. This is the man who started me cooking.”

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He reckons he’ll end up serving 30 to 40 people, and one envies them. This is as good a point as any to mention that Morse is a pro: He’s the proprietor of Capt. Frank’s Smoke Shack in Bayou La Batre. Today, though, it’s all for fun. And for tradition.

How long has he been coming to this parade? “Since they started,” he says.

“We had a friend that owned that house right there,” he says, pointing across the street. “We used to have big parties over there. For years I used to go down by the school, because I like the palm trees. We partied. I got this made, and I started bringing it. We’ve brought it downtown [in Mobile] to Joe Cain Day several times.”

What’s the motivation?

“The attraction is bringing your friends and your family together and seeing them after the wintertime, because life gets busy and you don’t see them,” he says. “And this is an awesome place. Dauphin Island.”

“Just after the holidays it starts, then we do downtown Mardi Gras too,” says Savell. “We’ve got a motor home we take down there and leave for two weeks and he brings the grill down there and we cook.”

This morning, Morse set up his rig before 9 a.m. “If you go to Mardi Gras and you want a certain place, you go early,” he says.

All up and down Bienville Boulevard, the party is rocking along nicely, and it’s still three hours before the Krewe de la Dauphine parade rolls out. Up past the boat launch known as Billy Goat Hole, near the east end of the island, the parading units have begun lining up. Some are conventional floats, vividly painted, festooned with tinsel and other brightwork, loaded with bags and boxes of trinkets that soon will be tossed to the crowd.

Some are boats. You can’t live any closer to the water than this community does, without actually living on it. Hitching up a boat for use as a parade float is a very natural thing to do.

One of them is the Missing Piece, a 22-foot center console with the name elaborately presented on its sides in a puzzle-piece motif. Aboard the boat, Tyler Clark and Drue Serpas have lined the rails and the perimeter of the T-top with green, purple and gold fringe, and are trying to figure out how best to mount additional decorations that normally would be stapled to flat surfaces.

They agree that spending a perfectly fine Saturday morning doing this is a little weird. “But it’s not New Orleans weird,” they say.

Tyler Clark explains that the Missing Piece is one of several boats being fielded by an organization called Fishing With Autism. For himself and Serpas it’ll be their first time participating in a parade.

The mission of the group is right there in the name: Boat owners and anglers take kids with autism, and other special-needs children, on fishing trips. This presents their guests with a variety of experiences, and exposure to nature, that they might not otherwise get.

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Tyler Clark’s dad, Keith Clark, got into it in a big way, big enough to put the elaborate artwork on his boat. “I got inspired, working with these little autistic kids,” says Keith Clark. “They’re fun, because they’re kinda like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get. Every one of them has a whole different thing going on.”

“They definitely found a softer side of me that I didn’t know was there,” he says.

Keith Clark says the idea arose because the organization’s president, who lives in the Mobile area, presented it to the membership and got some takers. Five or six boat-floats will be taking part today, meaning some kids will bank the entirely new experience of a boat ride, on land, in a Mardi Gras parade.

There’s still a couple of hours to go before the parade rolls. All along the boulevard, there’s music in the air. After an 11-month moratorium, “Wobble” and “Cupid Shuffle” are back in heavy rotation. Children are everywhere, with blankets and even playpens for the youngest. At least a couple of enterprising Girl Scouts are selling cookies along the route.

Near the “T” where the sole road onto the island intersects the boulevard, there’s something else in the air: impossibly huge, iridescent soap bubbles drifting across the roadway.

The lady launching them, Jill Markland, is new to this too. She and her husband, Jeff Markland, are from Illinois, vacationing. It’s their first time on Dauphin Island, their first time experiencing Mardi Gras. “This isn’t warm but it’s not Illinois cold,” she says.

Blowing bubbles before the parade is a way to join in, to add to the vibe, and maybe do a little stealth marketing for her business, Bubble Lady Bubbles. Normally this time of year she and Jeff would be down in Florida, but damage from 2024’s hurricanes upset that routine. So they’re staying in coastal Alabama while they hit a few “bubble events” in the region.

“I’m loving it,” she says.

Nearby, at the T, a steady stream of cars turn right or left after arriving on the island. By the time the parade starts at 1 p.m., this will have been going on for several hours without pause. You begin to wonder how they can all find space to fit in, but somehow it happens.

This has the potential to be an offseason boom for the island’s businesses, and a visit to the Lighthouse Bakery seems to bear that out. A full staff serves out sandwiches, pastries and coffees, holding their own with a line that never ends. Other customers are here to pick up king cakes, ordered from a menu of at least six different types.

A sign on the door warns patrons that the business will be closing at 1 p.m. “It’s Mardi Gras on Dauphin Island,” it says, “and we like to enjoy the parade too!”

Starting at 1 p.m., the parade wends its way slowly westward: Superhero-themed floats carrying Krewe de la Dauphine maskers bear out the “KDLD Saves the Day” motif. In between them are classic cars, beauty queens and princesses of all ages, trailer bands, boats, Shriners, law enforcement units and more. Up in Mobile, the riders of towering floats hurl their beads and other throws at outstretched arms on the other side of barricades lining the streets. Here, there is no wall of steel between the two. A gentle toss is all it takes, or in many cases a handoff.

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After a while the procession passes the T and once it has cleared the junction, the exodus from the east end begins. Like the back-and-forth of tides in the Mississippi Sound, the currents flow: The parade moves to the west, and viewers on the east end seize the opportunity to hit the road. The parade turns and begins the return trip eastward, making it possible for people on the west end to load up and leave.

But not everyone is in a rush to do so. The typical evening parade in Mobile is a diversion that lasts an hour or two: Hurry downtown to park and get in position before the barricades close, see the thing, hurry back to the car and try to beat traffic on the way out, tomorrow’s a school day. But the Dauphin Island parades present a whole different experience. It’s going to take up half your day at a minimum, and it’s an all-day friends-and-family thing if you do it right.

It’ll happen again in a week, when the Dauphin Island People’s Parade rolls the same route at 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8.

And if town rules allowed parade-goers to claim their spots on the medium now for a certain two Saturdays in early 2026, some of them surely would.