Visiting Coastal Mississippi…

We really enjoyed our short stay near Mobile Alabama but were also looking forward to our next stay on the coast of Mississippi. However we weren't even sure we would be ablet to stay at the Davis Bayou Campground because it had closed in September to repave all the loops in the park.

We were finally notified that the park would open October 1st so we were good to go. Our drive to the park was uneventful and as we pulled in we noticed the park was full even on the first day it reopened. We found out later it was because we were in Ocean Spring MS during the Crusin’ the Coast event.

This annual festival celebrates antique, classic and hot rod vehicles, nostalgic music and related events. It is the largest event in Mississippi and will have upwards to 9,000 vintage cars registered and on-site for the event. It was fun because everywhere we went we would see all kinds of older cars dating back to the 30’s.

While it was cool to see all these cars it wasn’t cool dealing with that much traffic clogging the coastal Mississippi roadways. Nonetheless we managed to find some fun. Davis Bayou Campground is located east of downtown Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and is a part of Gulf Islands National Seashore so as such we enjoyed several short hikes while visiting.

Our morning walk would take us to a salt marsh and a fresh water marsh where we would occasionally see an American Alligator. We were a little bummed when we discovered most of the hikes were closed as the boardwalks were partially destroyed due to previous storms. Why they are putting no effort into rebuilding them is anyone’s guess.

We also went over to one of the local casinos to play a little video poker. We aren’t big gamblers as we play mostly for fun on the nickel slots. While playing our nickel poker we were served free Heinekens so even though we lost a few bucks we felt we  won after having some free beers!

While in Ocean Springs we also found a used bike to replace Sharon’s old beater bike that we had been using bailing wire and duct tape to keep it rolling. The last straw was when somewhere on the backroads of Alabama we somehow lost the front wheel off the bike. We don’t know if it fell off or was stolen but if it fell off we certainly hope no one was injured by it! Yikes!!!

Lastly we also celebrated our 47th wedding anniversary in Mississippi. We knew just the place to celebrate, Bozos! Bozo makes one of the best po’ boys we have ever had and we simply had to return. Sharon and I shared one of the stuffed shrimp po’ boys and a fried oyster basket. Man were we stuffed after that feast! and we toasted to the hope for many more years of wedded bliss…

Two new stops, Meridian, MS. and Tuscaloosa, AL.

With the weekend over we left Hattiesburg, MS and drove a short distance NW over to Meridian MS. Our next stop was at a park called Bonita Lakes RV Park and this would be our first visit to Meridian. While the park was okay the town of Meridian has seen better days. There was not a whole lot to see unless you like dilapidated buildings mostly boarded up and abandoned.

While we haven’t escaped the hot weather we are seeing more wildflowers in bloom. This is likely due to the fact we are also seeing more rain. We have been fortunate in that the rain has fallen at times we aren’t out and about.

The best thing about the campground in Meridian is that it is nearly right across the street from Bonita Lakes Nature Park. There is a seven mile trail around a large lake and a shorter trail which encircles a smaller lake. Bonita Lakes is the gemstone of Meridian!

We set out onto the seven mile trail which we found to be in great shape. It was mostly shaded which was wonderful in the HOT temperatures. We experienced climbs and flats in a densely wooded mixture of hardwoods and pines. It was a really nice hike with many peeks at the lake through the forested canopy. We only planned to hike about three miles due to predicted rains so we hiked to a point on the lake and returned the way we came.

The next day we packed up and moved for a first time visit to a COE Park named Deerlick Creek Park. We chose this park for its proximity to Tuscaloosa, Alabama which is a place we never visited before. We wanted to check out this college town and explore both it and the University of Alabama.

Deerlick Creek Park is well off the beaten path but only about 20 minutes to Tuscaloosa. There is some nice hiking in the park and a bike trail. It was happily another heavily wooded park on a lake with some huge sites. While many are near the water, the water can mostly be reached only by descending a steep embankment.

Our visit to the University of Alabama was a highlight of this trip as it was way more impressive than either of us had imagined. The southern styled architecture and the large trees made our exploration really wonderful. Again we needed the shade on this hot day.

No trip to the university would be complete without a visit the the famed football stadium where many a National Championship has been won. There is a large stature of their elephant mascot nearby which was worthy of a stop as well. What a nice and very walkable campus. We were so glad we decided to visit..

Tuscaloosa has a lot of positives for a future place for us to settle down. We talked about some of the negatives and positives. We’ll keep it on the list. To add intrigue to our quest to find a place to land, on our last night in Tuscaloosa a hackberry emperor butterfly kept landing on me. I don’t know if this was an omen or if I simply made a new friend…

Fontainebleau SP and Hattiesburg MS…

We packed up the RV and headed east to our next stop near Mandeville LA at Fontainebleau State Park. Fontainebleau SP is one of our favorite parks to stay at in Louisiana. The park offers nice sized sites in the woods with hiking and biking opportunities.

We hiked the trails in the park that meander through the Pine-Hardwood forest and lead to the picturesque pier at the end of the trail. The pier is one of the highlights of this park as it sits over the northern end of Lake Pontchartrain. At Happy Hour it is always fun to stop in Mandeville at the Old Rail Brewery for a cold one.

Our next stop after Fontainebleau SP was a stop in a new (for us) town in Mississippi. We will spend a few nights in Hattiesburg MS at the Forrest County Multi-Purpose Park which is basically your typical fairgrounds site but this one does have sewer hookups as well.

As many full-timers know securing weekend spots while traveling is getting harder and harder so stopping at off the beaten path places like fairgrounds can fill the need for weekend campsites. Here we are able to have full hookups, just outside of town  for only $20 per night which is pretty hard to beat.

Adjacent to the campground is Forrest County Lake which allows fishing and hiking within its confines. Better yet there is a boardwalk/pier bisecting the lake making for some fun gazing into the water, watching sunsets or simply enjoying nature’s reflections.

We walked into the woods on the other side of the boardwalk several times and there were numerous (unmarked) trails scattered all over the place. It would be easy to get confused of your whereabouts if you aren’t paying attention. Each day as we walked back and forth on the boardwalk we would engage in conversation with the local fishermen. They admit to catching fish here but we didn’t see a single fish caught in  the three days we were there.

Hattiesburg MS is an interesting town as it has a mixture of areas that look like they are on the upswing yet there are many other areas that look impoverished. We did find a nice disc golf course that was heavily wooded and quite challenging. It was here we found our first freely suspended basket which made for an interesting challenge.

The downtown area is reflective of the town as a whole. Some nice, and some not so nice areas can be found. We were looking for a brewery downtown but the building was so poorly marked we nearly missed it. We were certainly glad we found the place (Southern Prohibition Brewery) because their beer was both exceptional and very affordable.

We didn’t have a single beer that we were disappointed in and we met some nice people at the bar. Sharon was chatting with one fellow who was delighted to learn we were fulltime RV’ers as his mom was about to undertake such an adventure. We gave tons of tips for his mom and he was so appreciative that he gifted us four different beers from a mixed case he had bought. Wow, it really pays to be nice to people…

Rolling into and through Mississippi…

Eta finally decided to make a hard turn to the NE then back through central Florida near Cedar Key. Now that Eta is behind us we can redirect our focus on how we will get to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas where we plan to spend winter 2020. While we aren’t big fans of wintering in south Texas we decided to do so since it is half the cost of wintering in Florida or Arizona and since we will mostly be staying home due to the pandemic worsening we just figured we might as well pay less to do less!

Leaving Alabama we drove another 146 miles west over to a new park for us near Gautier, MS called Santa Maria RV Resort. We chose it because it is close to the Mississippi coast and it had great reviews. Once we arrived we were pretty underwhelmed and were not sure why people rated this park so high. It is basically a gravel parking lot with hook ups.

We decided to make the best of the situation and once we settled in, we took a walk around the park. It has two sections one near the entrance and another section  in the back overlooking a pond with what looks like mostly permanent residents. We found out later that many were transient oil field workers.

The next day we drove over to the Sandhill Crane Wildlife Refuge to walk the loop trail which we knew was a pleasant hike. We saw lots of wildflowers in bloom even now in November. While we didn’t see any Sandhill Cranes on the refuge we did see a small flock flying toward it after we left.

Another day we drove Over to Biloxi MS to walk along the beach. The sea was as calm as we have ever seen it. The walk was nice with a few shells and shorebirds to perk our interest. Lot of trees were down in this area too but not as many as we saw at our previous stop.

For lunch we drove over to Bozo’s Seafood in  Gautier MS. I read great reviews and even though it took a long time to get our shrimp po’boy (to go) it was indeed worth the wait. It was really, really good and stuffed with decent sized shrimp….a real road treat!

Before leaving we drove over to Chandeleur Islands Brewery in Gulfport MS and enjoyed a couple a pretty good brews even though we felt them to be way over priced. With the end of our stay in Mississippi I need to do some serious planning soon to map out  our way down to South Texas to arrive by December 1st…

NOTE:  We are currently in Duson, Louisiana for two nights before heading onward towards Texas…

Quickly Traveling West, Avoiding Storms…

We packed up and left Eastbank Corps of Engineers Park just after 10:00 am and two minutes later we were back in Florida continuing our trek east across the panhandle. Three hours later we were in Alabama and pulled into a park we have stayed before called Wilderness RV Park. It is a no frills spot just fine for a one night stop over.

It was overcast but warm so we drove over to check out the town of Fairhope. We had heard good things about the town so we decided to check it out. It was a quaint little coastal town and we found a city park with a nice pier that we walked to the end of. While exploring the town and while driving through a neighborhood we stumbled upon a Hollywood film crew. A google search revealed it will be a movie called The Best Friend and will star Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson! It will be fun to look for the movie release knowing we were in town while they were filming it. Anyway, we ended our town tour at Fairhope Brewing Company and enjoyed a couple of nice brews.

We drove back to the park and when morning came a cold front was about to come through so we pushed on westward. After several hours we pulled into a park called Mcleod Park Campground in Kiln, MS leaving us on 44 miles from our next stop. We stopped here so we could check out this interesting little county park and since rain was in the forecast, we wanted to be close to our next stop in case the skies were unfriendly to us…

We checked with the attendant who told to pick any empty site then come back and pay. We found a fabulous one right on the water! We backed into the site and paid after setting up. It was overcast and threatening to rain. With the weather being very dicey we decided to spend the day checking out the new casino nearby.

As with most casinos the Scarlet Pearl Casino offered us $10. free play as new members. Not only that but we were also told we could have a free lunch buffet if we wanted but we had to hurry before it closed. Hurry, we did! The normally $19.95 per person buffet was really good and included items such as stuffed flounder, boiled shrimp, boiled clams, fried shrimp, roasted turkey and much much more…

Needless to say we overate and then we remembered dessert!!! We rarely eat dessert but had to check out what they had. Wow, big mistake as we got a huge plate of tantalizing desserts and ate even more before we left. We rarely eat at buffets for the simple reason that we typical eat way too much but we would highly recommend this buffet if you like this sort of thing.

We gambled with our free play on their video poker machines and left with a little over $20. It was a great day at the casino for us… Our next stop will be at Fontaineblue State Park in Louisiana.

NOTE: We are now at Betty’s RV park for a month before continuing on toward Texas…

Slowly Moving West and a Mississippi Hike…

It took us a while to get over the fact that we murdered a poor turkey and in return will have to pay a $1,000 dollar penance (deductible for our insurance). However,after taping up the inside of our windshield we made our way slowly on the back roads of Florida to Robertsdale Alabama for an overnight stay at a Passport America Park.

Wilderness RV Park is a modest park but at the low passport America rate it was the perfect stop for a one night stay. We didn’t really do anything while staying there and the next morning we hit the road again for another drive on mostly back roads to Ocean Springs Mississippi.

I snagged two nights at Davis Bayou Campground in the the Gulf Islands National Park in Mississippi. Somebody cancelled and we got lucky securing a site using our senior pass. This was a great location to visit the sights in this area but with rain coming through the area we didn’t really do much the first day.

Before the rain we did walk around some of the smaller trails in the park and found a neat little boardwalk pull-out where we saw a few baby alligators. We were unable to explore further as the clouds started rolling in so we headed back to the RV. We did go out for a hamburger and a cold beer while it rained so the day wasn’t a total loss.

The next day we went over to a trail called the Fontainebleau Trail in the Sandhill Crane National Park. The trail meandered through the typical pine/hardwood forest found in the southeast but it was great seeing all the signs of spring budding out. Most spectacular were the wild azaleas blooming like mad in the forest.

There were other plants blooming including the lyre sage, thistle, blackberries,  black titi, flowering dogwood and other early bloomers. We were fascinated by the yellow galls on the sweetbay magnolias. We found one that pointed us in the right direction and another that had an uncanney face (thanks to some midge flies that landed to make the eyes). I love this time of the year when trees and bushes begin budding while the wildflowers and the brilliant greens of early spring also peek out.

It was a great hike but our two days ended forcing us to decide where to head next. After scouring the maps we decided that we would go to Bayou Segnette State Park south of New Orleans Louisiana and visit the city one more time. We will be there three nights and although the weather will be a little chilly, we are still looking forward to our stay there.

We are still dealing with insurance for the windshield repair and it is not moving as fast as I would have hoped… but such is life on our road of retirement…

NOTE: We are now at Bayou Segnette State Park and will leave here on Friday for a 15 night stay at Betty’s RV Park in Abbeville LA.