The Nomadic Life

We are going to start gradually moving north now, hopefully get to Minnesota by the first of April.  Today we only went 30 miles, staying in Hammond, Louisiana, for the night.



Crawfish Bread





Alligator Meat



Crawfish

Hello







Another beautiful day for a parade.  There was a parade in Slidell, Louisiana, that we heard was supposed to be a good one, so we drove into Louisiana to see it.  We were there about three hours before the parade started and had no trouble finding a place to park along the parade route.  There were already lots of people parked and tailgating.  Some people went all out, setting up tents and tables and grills for their families. 

Apparently people used to go and park their cars up to three days before the parade was to start so the city posted signs saying they can park there no more than 12 hours before the parade. 

This parade was a little more traditional in style.  There were two marching bands, several dance groups and a few jump rope organizations as well as the Mardi Gras floats and beads tossing to hungry crowds.

 

Midway through the parade it just stopped, and everyone took a break.  The band members put down their instruments and sat down.  Some just laid down and rested, and the band director made everyone eat a banana and take a drink.

Two custom pickup trucks.

When the parade ended we sat and watched the traffic for a while.  We saw some interesting vehicles.



Just some of the beads we got today, as well as the cups.



We scored almost as many beads as we did at the parade yesterday in Gulfport, MS, but this time we also captured two plastic Mardi Gras souvenir cups.  Woot! hahaha   

Big dog ready to party!



Get your boiled peanuts!



 



Tossing Beads

Street vendors

No sitting quietly on the curb. “Give me something!!!”



Nobody goes empty handed



Old motor  homes never die, the just turn into Mardi Gras floats.

Our Loot for the day

There was a Girl Scout who lived on the parade route. Yay! I was afraid I wasn’t going to get any this year.

  


 



 



 



The weather during the day is fabulous..70 degrees, blue sky, no bugs, just beautiful.  However, at night a dense Sea Fog rolls in but is gone by 9am the next day.

We have moved inland a few miles.  Once it warmed up where we were the little black flies came out and started biting us, so forget that. 

It’s Mardi Gras time and people decorate their homes with beads and wreaths, etc. of green and gold and purple. 



Mississippi’s idea of a 4-way stop?

 It’s so great to have all that nasty weather behind us.  It was a beautiful sunshiny 70 degree day today.  We drove around the area looking at a few other RV parks to see what they had to offer.  The nicest one we found was a casino RV park.  Of course, while we were there we had to go in and use the bathrooms.  Somehow a $1 bill jumped out of my wallet and entered a penny slot machine, so I HAD to play it.  It kept us entertained for almost 5 minutes before it vanished.


Nature trail thru the woods 5 years after Katrina.

The RV park office gave us a breakfast coupon for a local restaurant in town so we went to eat.  How hard is it to make breakfast?  Worst I’ve ever had.  What I liked most about that place was a sign I saw on the wall that said:  “They say age is all in the mind.  The problem is keeping it from creeping down into your body.”



View of the RV park from the nature trail at Buccaneer State Park

 After a stop at Walmart for groceries we went back to Buccaneer State Park.  They (used to) have a nice nature trail in the woods around the park.   They had lost 8,000 trees when Hurricane Katrina came thru in 2005.  It is beginning to restore itself, but it will be a long time before it’s woodsy again.




What’s Left of the Water Slide

We were ready for a change of scenery so we moved almost two hours west to Buccaneer State Park at Waveland, Mississippi.  It is also right on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, about an hour east of New Orleans, Louisiana.

All of the new utility boxes and transformers are on raised platforms.

Even the office is half-elevated.

Elevated house inside the park. Many many private homes are elevated all along coast.

Here’s where we are tonight.

It was such a nice day today we went out to a nice seafood restaurant for lunch.  I had flounder… excellent fish…mmmm, and yes, expensive.  Then we drove around the park some more and back into town and the beach.  These are just some more pictures I took today.

The Davis Bayou

We do see lots of red birds, I think they are cardinals, they’re different than the ones at home.

A Pier on the Gulf of Mexico



The Gulf Beach at Biloxi





oops!

 The first thing I do in the morning is to check the temperatures where my family lives.  I had a good laugh, this has to be a big mistake, there is no way it was 122F in Mesa, Arizona, early this morning.  About an hour later it was corrected. 

It was freezing here over night, but once the sun came out it warmed up a bit and we decided to go out for a drive.  We found the park in Biloxi where there is the memorial for Hurricane Katrina.  In the park there is also another sculpture made from a tree that did not survive after Katrina.  A few feet from that sculpture is the memorial.





On Monday, August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina, the worst national disaster in United States History, struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  Now, almost six years later, there are still signs of the damage it did.  The memorial stands 12 feet tall, about the height of the water during the storm surge. 

At the Katrina Memorial is included a glass case.  This case contains a sculptural collage of found items donated by locals.  These items where collected, and the stories behind each item recorded as part of the Memorial construction.  Additional items that were donated but not used in the glass memorial case are buried in a time capsule on the site.

This small lighthouse is Biloxi’s signature landmark and one of the most photographed sites on the Gulf Coast.  Constructed of cast iron, it was built in 1848.

While in the parking lot to see the lighthouse, we found this man and his van.  We talked with him for a while.  He says he is traveling around promoting awareness for male breast cancer.  That may be true, but I suspect he was probably just trying to support himself.  He let us write our names on his van and take his picture, so we gave him some money.

Just a few yards from the lighthouse and the man with the van is a sign telling about how this was the location for a big civil rights “wade-in” on the beach in 1960 demanding equal access to the public beach by both black and white people. 

All of the Mississippi Gulf Shore was also hit hard by that big oil spill last summer.  You can still see teams of people patrolling the beach looking for tar balls.  But the beaches are open to the public and they do appear to be clean. 



The Friendship Oak Tree





The rain has stopped, the sky cleared, and the sun came out.  It’s still cold, and supposed to be a hard freeze tonight.  It’s strange hearing them say things on the radio like don’t go out, keep your pets inside, check on the elderly, opening up warming centers for the homeless, etc., it’s the big news all day.  It’s supposed to get down to +28F here in Gulfport tonight, colder in the northern part of the state.  I’m sure Minnesota wishes it would warm up to that!

The southern Mississippi dialect is quite distinct.  I could barely understand the lady at the visitor center as her accent was so thick, and the security guard sounded like Goober Pyle from Mayberry.  I couldn’t help but laugh when we were back in the car.  And now the campground host says to me: “you must be from up north, I can’t understand you.”  I thought that was odd since I could understand him just fine.

No pictures for the blog today.  We stayed in all day except we went out for lunch to a place called Martha’s Tea Room.  Food was fresh and homemade, very good, waitress was awesome, prices were high.

Gulf Island National Seashore National Park



You never know when a turtle might leap out in front of you.



Today we moved a little further south, as far south as we can go in Mississippi.  We are now at the Gulf Island National Seashore National Park.  We’ll be here for at least three nights.  More freezing cold is predicted for tomorrow, so it may be a few days before we go exploring.  At least we’re not getting the snow everyone else is getting.



This is another nice campground.  We have a site with water and electricity for $8 a night…an excellent price.  14 day maximum stay.  There are 50+ sites here.  It’s filled up and we are seeing several people being turned away.  Knock on wood…we’ve been lucky this year, we’ve never been turned away.  I probably just jinxed it now by saying that.

Ugh…it just started raining.







The weather has improved for now but there’s another storm system on the way in the next few days.  We left the Vicksburg area and drove south to Big Biloxi Recreation Area in the De Soto National Forest in southern Mississippi.  We are able to stay here in this nice modern campground with electricity and water for $13 per night.  Planning on two nights.  And, hey, we have internet and TV reception so we can watch the Superbowl (commercials) Go Packers!

 Another freezing night and more freezing rain.  The trees were all covered in ice this morning but the roads were clean and dry.  We told the park office we would stay one more night as we wanted to see a few more things before we left the area.  While looking thru the visitor information we have we noticed a place called Poverty Point State Historic Site. It was across the river in Louisiana, so we got in the car and headed in that direction.

I-20 and a railroad bridge across the Mississippi River at Vicksburg

This is a 1938 aerial photograph of the earthworks. It’s about 3/4 of a mile wide

Cooking Demonstration

When we left the park we took the scenic route back.  We noticed a really nice house/mansion and went to look closer… it must have been a private residence… there was no signs or anything giving it a name.  Nice.



Ameristar Casino



There was some freezing rain over night, but it let up and warmed up by noon so we ventured out to explore the historic Vicksburg some more.  We found the Biedenharn Museum of Coca-Cola Memorabilia.  This is the restored 1890 building where Coca-Cola was first bottled anywhere in the world in 1894.

Restored 1890 candy store with Coke memorabilia.  In the building beside and behind this candy store is the Coke museum and a 1900 soda fountain.

WHO remembers this???

They had a penny press!  I added to my collection.

Old Historic Downtown Vicksburg



The tour road goes around and thru the actual battlefield.

1,330 monuments and markers along a 16 mile tour road.

This was at a small Confederate fort on a big hill overlooking the Mississippi River.

Maj. General Ulysses S. Grant

Just a small portion of Vicksburg National Cemetery.  Of the 17,000 Union soldiers buried here, about 13,000 are unknown.  There are also veterans of the Spanish-American war, World Wars I and II and the Korean conflict.  It was closed to burials in 1961.

You can see what remains of a trench dug by the soldiers in the center of the picture.  You will see many more trenches throughout the park.

The U.S.S. Cairo.  A Union ironclad gunboat.  The first vessel in history to be sunk by an electrically detonated torpedo (today called a mine).

Bald Cypress Swamp

 It was a cold and windy night, but we kept comfortable by running the furnace in the RV.  We got up early and continued on our way down the Natchez Trace Parkway.  As we head further south we can see changes in the scenery.  One place we found was a bald cypress swamp.  There was a nice walking path and boardwalk going around and thru it.  We walked it for a while but it was still below freezing so we just took a few pictures and went back to the warmth of our RV.  I hope things warm back up in a few days.

Casino RV Park

We have left the Natchez Trace Parkway and took a side road west to the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi.  We will check out the historic town tomorrow. 

We found a very nice RV park that belongs to a casino across the street.  It’s so green!  They had just finished mowing the grass when we arrived…. ahhhh…love the smell of fresh mowed grass.  I think I will be happy here… full hookups including TV cable, wi-fi that actually works, a free shuttle to the casino, and cheap!!  Maybe we’ll stay a few days.