Gulf Coast Calendar: 20+ Things to Do Around Mobile and Baldwin County Nov. 24-30, 2016

The week after Thanksgiving packs the south Alabama calendar with pow wows, holiday light shows, art markets and championship soccer. Here is a rundown of what is on tap across Mobile and Baldwin counties from Thursday, Nov. 24 through Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016.

The stretch between Thanksgiving and the first week of December has become one of the busiest on the Gulf Coast calendar, as the region pivots almost overnight from turkey tables to tree lightings. This year is no exception, with events spread from Atmore to Orange Beach and something on the schedule for nearly every evening of the week.

Holiday lights and festivals

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians hosts its 46th annual Pow Wow on Thanksgiving Day and Friday, Nov. 25, beginning at noon at 6477 Jack Springs Road in Atmore. Admission is $5 for ages 11 and up, and children 10 and under get in free.

The Poarch gathering is one of the longest-running pow wows in the Southeast, drawing dancers, drum groups and craftspeople from across the region to the tribe’s home reservation community north of Atmore. The tribe, the only federally recognized tribe in Alabama, has hosted the Thanksgiving-week event for decades, and it has grown into a fixture of the holiday weekend for families across south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Bellingrath Gardens and Home opens the 21st season of Magic Christmas in Lights on Friday, Nov. 25. The display runs nightly from 5 to 9 p.m. through Dec. 31.

Magic Christmas in Lights turns the Theodore estate into one of the Gulf Coast’s signature holiday destinations, with themed light scenes winding through the azalea-lined paths along Fowl River. The 21st season continues a tradition that has drawn generations of visitors, many of whom combine the garden walk with a tour of the Bellingrath home decorated for the holidays. Weeknights tend to be lighter on crowds, and the gardens encourage visitors to arrive early in the evening for the full walk.

Christmas Nights of Lights returns to Hank Aaron Stadium, 755 Bolling Brothers Blvd., running nightly at dusk until 10 p.m. through Jan. 1. Admission is $6 per person.

The drive-through light show at the home of the Mobile BayBears lets families take in the display from the warmth of their cars, with synchronized light sequences running along the ballpark grounds. It joins the growing list of drive-through and walk-through attractions that have made holiday lighting a winter mainstay for the city’s sports venues.

Riverside Ice is open at Cooper Riverside Park in downtown Mobile through Jan. 14, with skating at $10 for adults and $8 for children 12 and under.

The seasonal rink puts an outdoor ice surface on the Mobile riverfront for the holidays, a novelty in a part of the country where outdoor skating is otherwise impossible. Cooper Riverside Park, at the foot of Government Street between the Gulf Coast Exploreum and the Arthur Outlaw Convention Center, gives the rink a downtown footprint within walking distance of restaurants and other holiday attractions.

Shopping, art and community

The Mobile Rock and Gem Society brings its annual Rock, Gem, Mineral and Jewelry Show to the Abba Shrine Center, 7701 Hitt Road, Friday from 1 to 6 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The show is a draw for collectors, jewelers and rockhounds across the central Gulf Coast, with dealers offering specimens, finished jewelry, lapidary equipment and fossils. The society has long used the annual event to introduce school groups and hobbyists to geology, and the West Mobile shrine center provides the space for the display tables that fill the hall each November.

Downtown Mobile’s Sunday Funday art market returns to Cathedral Square on Nov. 27 at 1 p.m., with support from the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Downtown Mobile Alliance and Visit Mobile.

The market turns the square in the heart of the Church Street East historic district into an open-air gallery, with local makers, painters and crafts vendors lining the grounds beside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The November edition lands in the middle of Small Business Saturday weekend, when downtown shops extend hours and the art market extends the browsing.

Nov. 26 is Small Business Saturday, an opportunity to support Mobile’s independent retailers, many of them downtown with special deals and giveaways planned.

The national shopping holiday, launched in 2010 to steer some of the post-Black Friday spending toward independent shops, has taken hold along Dauphin Street, Bienville Square and the Oakleigh and Midtown commercial districts, where locally owned boutiques, bookstores and record shops anchor the retail base. Downtown boosters have used the day to remind shoppers that dollars spent locally stay in the local economy, and many stores pair the promotions with extended holiday hours.

The Greater Mobile Bay Area Choral Society performs a holiday concert mixing jazz, pop, secular works and Vivaldi on Sunday, Nov. 27, at 6 p.m. at Spanish Fort Presbyterian Church.

The community chorus draws singers from across Mobile and Baldwin counties and has made its early-winter concert a seasonal staple on the Eastern Shore. The mix of styles, from sacred baroque to jazz standards, gives the program breadth beyond the usual holiday fare, and the church venue on Spanish Fort’s main corridor keeps admission close and parking easy.

USA Children’s & Women’s Hospital holds its sixth annual Lights of Love Winter Wonderland and tree-lighting ceremony Tuesday, Nov. 29, beginning at 4:30 p.m. at 1700 Center St. Admission is free.

The event raises money for the hospital while giving families a chance to honor children treated there, with sponsor lights on the display tree recognizing gifts of all sizes. The Midtown hospital, part of the University of South Alabama health system, serves as the region’s dedicated children’s and women’s facility, and the Winter Wonderland has grown into one of its signature community evenings, complete with refreshments, activities and the lighting itself after dark.

From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, Best Friends Animal Society’s Home for the Pawlidayz promotion offers free pet adoptions at The Haven, 559 South St. in Fairhope.

The Fairhope no-kill shelter participates in the national campaign each year to move animals into homes during the holidays, when families have time at home to help a new pet settle in. The Haven has long operated one of the busiest adoption programs on the Eastern Shore, and the free-adoption window typically empties a meaningful share of its kennels before December.

Museums, lectures and learning

The University of South Alabama Gulf Shores campus launches its second annual Distinguished Lecture Series Tuesday, Nov. 29, at the Foley Public Library; registration is available through USA Continuing Education.

The series extends the university’s reach into Baldwin County, where the Gulf Shores campus has served as a base for continuing education and community programming. Partnering with the Foley library puts the lectures in one of the county’s most active civic venues, north of the beach communities and convenient to residents across the southern half of the county.

The History Museum of Mobile continues the exhibit “Filming the Camps: From Hollywood to Nuremberg” through Jan. 16, telling the story of three film directors who documented Nazi atrocities during World War II.

The traveling exhibit follows Hollywood directors John Ford, George Stevens and Samuel Fuller, who filmed the liberation of the Nazi camps and later the Nuremberg trials, drawing on their film footage, photographs and personal accounts. The museum, housed in the Old City Hall complex on Royal Street downtown, has used the exhibit’s extended run to host school groups through the winter.

The Gulf Coast Exploreum features “Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked the World,” with more than 60 guitars and a hands-on gallery, through Jan. 1, plus a Little Discoveries program on creativity for children 6 and under on Dec. 1 at 10 a.m.

The touring exhibition traces the guitar’s history from stringed instrument ancestors through the electric instruments that shaped popular music, with playable stations and science exhibits on sound and amplification that fit the science center’s hands-on format. The weekly Little Discoveries session gives the youngest visitors a scaled-down introduction to the gallery’s themes.

GulfQuest’s “Treasures of NOAA’s Ark” exhibit explores how the agency charts seas and tracks hurricanes, while the Dauphin Island Sea Lab continues its Boardwalk Talks on the first and third Wednesday of each month at 11:15 a.m.

The GulfQuest National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico, on the riverfront downtown, uses the NOAA exhibit to walk visitors through the science of weather buoys, nautical charting and hurricane tracking, subjects with obvious resonance on a coast that measures its years by storm seasons. Across the bay, the Sea Lab’s free boardwalk sessions put estuary researchers in front of the public on the marsh edge of Dauphin Island, where the topic changes with each session and questions are welcome.

The Mobile Museum of Art offers free admission to all visitors every Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the Fairhope Museum of History hosts its Tea for Two lecture series Tuesdays at 2 p.m., with Rev. Larry Williams speaking Nov. 29.

The free Thursdays at the Langan Park museum, the largest art museum on the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Tampa, have become a standing invitation for residents who might not otherwise visit, with the late closing time making it possible after work. In Fairhope, the Tea for Two series packs the history museum’s meeting room on Tuesday afternoons, and the Nov. 29 talk continues the museum’s run of speakers on local and regional topics drawn from the city’s deep civic archives.

Sports and fitness

The Coastal Half Marathon, 5K and one-mile fun run runs Saturday, Nov. 26, in Orange Beach.

The race gives runners a post-Thanksgiving workout on the beach city’s back trails, with the half marathon distance drawing training runners keeping fitness through the holiday season and the one-mile fun run making it a family morning. Orange Beach’s trail network along the canal and state park lands has made the city a favored host for Gulf Coast running events in the cooler months.

The NAIA Women’s Soccer National Championship follows Nov. 28 through Dec. 3 at the Orange Beach Sportsplex, with 16 teams from across the country competing for the title. The tournament is a signature get for the Sportsplex, a Gulf Coast tournament venue along the Foley Beach Express corridor, and the sixteen qualifying teams spend a week filling Baldwin County hotels and restaurants before the Dec. 3 final.

Palmer Pillans Middle School hosts ballroom dance, boxing and other exercise classes, beginner belly dancing runs Tuesdays through Dec. 13, and the Mobile Bridge Center offers free bridge lessons each Tuesday at 6 p.m.

The midweek offerings reflect the breadth of the area’s recreation programs, from school-based fitness classes to card clubs that have kept duplicate bridge alive in Mobile for decades. The free lessons at the bridge center serve as the entry point for new players, many of whom go on to the club’s regular weekday games.

Azalea Ballroom Dance Club holds dances with live music on the second and fourth Tuesdays at Via! Health, Fitness & Enrichment Center in Midtown, while the Moonlight Chasse Ballroom Dance Society meets the first and third Monday in Spanish Fort.

The two clubs give dancers on both sides of the bay a standing schedule through the winter, with live music nights at the Midtown senior fitness center and society meetings on the Eastern Shore. Ballroom has maintained a devoted following in Mobile County for generations, and the clubs routinely welcome beginners to their regular dances.

Giving back

United Way of Southwest Alabama’s 2-1-1 call center needs weekday volunteers; #GivingTuesday falls on Nov. 29, kicking off the season of charitable giving nationwide.

The 2-1-1 line, which connects residents to everything from utility assistance to food pantries across Mobile, Washington and Clarke counties, depends on trained volunteer call specialists through the year, and the holiday season brings both rising demand and the annual push for help. #GivingTuesday, launched in 2012 as a counterweight to the shopping days that precede it, has grown into a national giving drive, and local nonprofits across the two-county area use the day to launch year-end campaigns that carry them through the first of the year.