The Alabama Bureau of Tourism (Dept. AT, 532 South Perry Street, Montgomery, AL 36104/Tel: 205-261-4169) will be glad to get you started. Mobile’s hotels include the Admiral Semmes (205-432-8000), the new Stouffer Riverview Plaza (205-438-4000), and the Malaga Inn, a forty-room hotel in an 1862 building surrounding a pretty courtyard (205-438-4701). Mobile’s various historic districts are set forth house by house in the excellent booklet Historic Mobile: An Illustrated Guide (Mobile Junior League Publications, P.O. Box 7091, Mobile, AL 36607). Midway up the eastern shore of the bay is Point Clear, which has been a resort since 1847; not long ago Marriott refurbished the fifty-year-old Grand Hotel (the third on the site) and surrounded it with a 650-acre park and a championship golf course (1-800-228-9290). On your way down toward Dauphin Island, stop at Bellingrath Gardens, 65 acres of scrupulous landscaping wrought on bayou wilderness by the man who secured Alabama’s Coca-Cola franchise shortly after the turn of the century.