We loved our stay in southern Louisiana at Fontainebleau State Park, but the plan was to head on over to Mississippi for a week stay and then come right back to Louisiana. After a drive of 110 miles, we pulled into our campsite at Davis Bayou campground which is part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. Campsites are nice and if campers use the senior lifetime pass it's only $11 per night for water and electricity!
Since the last time we stayed at this park, they have built a boardwalk adjacent to the marsh. We used to have to walk in the road to see the marsh and now with the boardwalk it's much more enjoyable. We walked this boardwalk every morning of our stay.
Several things we saw or encountered while walking the boardwalk in the mornings were such critters as Clapper Rails and a Common Loon. Whenever Clapper Rails are in the area you will know it since they make quite the noise. One such morning I decided to use my phone's Merlin app to see if I could call one up so Sharon could see one up close. When I played the bird song to entice one, suddenly a Clapper Rail immediately called back and startled Sharon as it was just few feet away from us. After calming down, she did indeed see and photograph it!
The story behind the Common Loon is that we saw one sitting on the side of the marsh near the road and thought it had been injured. It couldn't seem to move. At first, we thought it may have been a baby Osprey as a nesting pair with offspring was close by and we had high winds during a storm the day before. It turned out to be a fledgling Loon and once a Game Warden we flagged down came by it abruptly scooted off into the water and started swimming away. We were about to call wildlife rescue to come save it, but we were glad it was just fine after all!
We found another fun thing to see located at the end of the boardwalk and across the street. There's a pond where we occasionally saw an alligator. We nicknamed the alligator who we spotted most mornings as Ollie. We were always happy to see and greet him on our walks.
While here we also visited a lot of casinos, especially with it being my birthday week. We were hopeful that some of the casinos would give us some free birthday cash and a few did. However, the casinos on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi provide free adult beverages for those who are gambling. As you may know we don't gamble a lot, but we sure had fun playing the nickel video poker and drinking free libations. Since it was raining a lot here during our stay this provided a nice indoor activity for some fun.
However, the main reason we came to this area was to visit Bozo's which is a Mississippi seafood market that also serves food. This is hands down the best and largest shrimp poor boy you will ever find for only $18. We bought one and shared it. Both of us were stuffed and we still took home enough shrimp for us to have a lunch another day. I can't recommend enough this excellent Mississippi establishment. Get the Shrimp Overload Po' boy. You will not be sorry!
But as always, all good things come to an end as our time on the Mississippi Coast ended. We decided to leave a few days early because monsoonal rains were hitting the area and we wanted to avoid them so we will quickly return to Louisiana.
No comments:
Post a Comment