Gulf Coast Calendar: Greater Gulf State Fair, Halloween Fun and More Around Mobile and Baldwin County Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2016

Halloween week brings one of the biggest events of the fall — the Greater Gulf State Fair — plus ghost tours, costume races, ballet and a full slate of trick-or-treat alternatives across Mobile and Baldwin counties for Oct. 27 through Nov. 2, 2016. For families sorting between scares and sugar-free alternatives, the week offers more options than any other stretch of the autumn calendar on the Gulf Coast.

The fair is back

The Grounds hosts the 62nd annual Greater Gulf State Fair from Friday, Oct. 28 through Sunday, Nov. 6, with 30 adult rides, 30 kids’ rides and more than 40 food and beverage vendors. The fair is the largest annual event held at The Grounds, the former fairgrounds site off Zeigler Boulevard in west Mobile, and its run spans two full weekends and the Halloween week in between.

Admission gates, ride wristbands and the midway’s mix of classic rides and new attractions make the fair a fixture for families across the two counties, and the extended schedule lets visitors dodge the biggest weekend crowds. The fair’s late-October slot has long made it the anchor of the region’s Halloween season, with costumed children a common sight on the midway during the trick-or-treat days.

Bellingrath Gardens and Home presents Boo at Bellingrath on Saturday, Oct. 29, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., a day of spooky family fun in the gardens. The Theodore estate’s 65 acres of garden rooms provide the backdrop for costume parades, treats and seasonal displays, and the daytime format makes the event an alternative for families who prefer their Halloween without the dark.

Halloween happenings

The Mobile Mystery Mystics lead a ghosts-and-strange-happenings tour of downtown Mobile on Halloween night at 7 p.m.; tickets are $45 and reservations are required. The group, which specializes in the stranger corners of the city’s three-century history, walks visitors past the historic buildings and haunts of the downtown district as the holiday reaches its peak.

The Mobile Witches Ride rolls Sunday, Oct. 30 — a slow-paced three-mile bicycle loop around downtown and DeTonti Square starting at the Blind Mule at 4 p.m., costumes encouraged. The ride has become a popular costume-and-community event in recent years, with participants pedaling through some of the city’s oldest neighborhoods in full witch attire.

Swift-Coles Historic Home in Bon Secour hosts haunted storytelling Friday, Oct. 28, at 6 p.m. ($10), and Bicentennial Park in Stockton opens its Haunted Trail Oct. 28-29 from 7 to 10 p.m. ($5). The Swift-Coles house, a late-19th-century mansion that has hosted seasonal events since its restoration, lends itself to the genre, and the Stockton trail has grown into one of north Baldwin County’s most reliable Halloween attractions.

The Exploreum throws its family-friendly Monster Ball Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Mobile Medical Museum stages Frightful Friday with a children’s story reading and skeleton game ($5), and St. Mary Catholic School holds Trunk or Treat Thursday evening on its Lafayette Street campus.

The American Autism & Rehabilitation Center hosts its second Sensory-Friendly Trick-or-Treat at its Daphne facility Friday from 4 to 6 p.m., designed for families with special needs who may find traditional festivities difficult. Sensory-friendly Halloween events have spread across the country in recent years as parents and therapists adapt the holiday for children who are overwhelmed by noise, crowds and costumes, and the Daphne event is one of the Eastern Shore’s principal offerings.

Strange Journeys’ Bark and Boo costume tour Saturday night benefits pet-adoption group Krewe de Rescue, meeting behind Ben May Main Library, and the Mobile Museum of Art teams with AIDS Alabama South for “Night of the Dead Artists,” a free Day of the Dead-meets-Halloween party Thursday at 6 p.m. The museum event folds the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition into the Halloween calendar, with the museum’s galleries as the setting.

Arts, culture and community

Mobile Ballet presents “Stars of American Ballet” for one night only Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Mobile Civic Center Theater. The program brings guest dancers to the Civic Center stage for a single performance, a format the company has used to supplement its main-stage season with shorter, high-visibility programs.

Mobile Mystery Dinners performs “The Masquerade Murder” Friday at the Battle House Hotel with dinner and wine included, and Live from Avalon features the Excelsior Band Thursday at 7 p.m. in Bernheim Hall at the Mobile Public Library. The Excelsior Band, a Mobile institution for more than a century, remains the city’s most storied musical ensemble, and the library venue offers an intimate setting for a group usually heard in parades.

The Leinkauf Historic District holds its Fall Residents Meeting Thursday at 6 p.m. at First Christian Church Community Hall, BayouClinic in Bayou La Batre teams with more than 30 agencies for a free community event Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the Satsuma Public Library hosts author Mary Palmer’s book signing on “George Wallace: An Enigma” Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 11 a.m. Neighborhood meetings like Leinkauf’s have taken on added weight as the historic district continues its revitalization, and the Bayou La Batre gathering brings health and social service agencies under one roof for a fishing community still rebuilding from storms and economic shifts.

Ongoing museum options include “Filming the Camps” at the History Museum of Mobile through Jan. 16, “Treasures of NOAA’s Ark” at GulfQuest, the Exploreum’s guitar exhibit through Jan. 1, free Thursdays at the Mobile Museum of Art and the Fairhope Museum of History’s Tuesday tea series, with Bellingrath’s Tom McGehee speaking Nov. 1. The museum slate gives visitors indoor alternatives during a week when the weather can turn, and the free Thursday admission at the art museum remains one of the best cultural bargains in the city.

Races, tournaments and workshops

The Movember-themed MOpen Championship tees off Friday at Spring Hill College’s golf course ($100 per person), while the seventh annual Dog River Ghost Chase and Goblin Gallop runs Saturday at 5 p.m. from Dockside Marina. The Movember movement, which raises awareness of men’s health issues each November through mustache-growing campaigns, has inspired charity golf events across the country, and the Spring Hill event channels that push into the local calendar.

The Dog River race, now in its seventh year, has built a loyal following among south Mobile County runners for its Halloween-weekend timing and its waterfront course, with the costume element as much a part of the appeal as the run itself. Events like it, along with the region’s other themed races, have made late October one of the busiest stretches of the year for local road racing.

Anglers compete in the Salty Worm Brackish Classic and Delta Bash Saturday at the Bluegill Restaurant on the Causeway benefiting pancreatic cancer research, St. Mary’s memorial golf tournament plays Sunday at Spring Hill, and the All’s Swell Classic surf contest raises funds to relocate Dauphin Island’s historic Red School House.

The Causeway tournaments underline how tightly fishing is woven into the Mobile Bay economy and its charitable culture. The brackish waters where the Mobile-Tensaw Delta meets the bay — the reason the Causeway restaurants hold the views they do — also make it a natural venue for competitive fishing, and charity tournaments there draw anglers from across the two counties. On Dauphin Island, the effort to move the Red School House, one of the barrier island’s oldest surviving structures, off its vulnerable site reflects the broader challenge the town has faced in protecting its historic buildings from storms and rising water.

ALDOT’s Mobile River Bridge bicycle and pedestrian crossing workshop meets Thursday evening at the James M. Seals Jr. Community Center, Eastern Shore Ace Hardware hosts a furniture-painting workshop Thursday in Spanish Fort ($39), and the West Mobile Farmer’s Market runs Tuesdays through Nov. 24 on Grelot Road.

The bridge workshop is part of the long-running public planning process for the proposed Interstate 10 Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project, which includes new bicycle and pedestrian accommodations as one of its components. Sessions like the one at the Seals Community Center give residents of neighborhoods south of downtown — where the crossing would land — a direct channel to state transportation planners, and turnout at such meetings has helped shape the project’s design commitments.

Planning the week

With the fair running through Nov. 6, museum exhibits open through the new year and the trick-or-treat alternatives spread across both counties, families can spread the season across several days rather than compressing it into one night. Events with reservations or ticket requirements — the Mystery Mystics tour and the Monster Ball among them — reward early planning, while the free community events in Bayou La Batre and the museum’s free Thursday offer no-cost options.

For the full calendar week, the mix is a fair measure of the Gulf Coast itself: a working port city’s history and museums, barrier-island surf, a Causeway fishing culture, and a Halloween season celebrated from west Mobile to Bon Secour. Whatever the choice, the region’s longest-running traditions — the fair, the mystical societies’ descendants in the ghost tours, and the Excelsior Band — remain at the center of it all.