_14 February ‘09 Saturday

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY to everybody !!! 

The Valentine Baby above is :  Austin, Phil and Kathy’s grandson

Louise and I are enjoying our Valentine Day here in Gulf Springs, Mississippi.  We went back to the casino this morning.  When we signed up for our “Gaming Card” they told us that if we were to come back this morning, we would receive up to $25 credit each, for the losses we might have incurred yesterday.  Well we parlayed that credit into a plus for me of $28 before I cashed in and Louise took it to $80 before she cashed in…  that was a nice Valentine gift for both of us. 

_“ Friday “  13 February ‘09

A little cloudy with the sun poking out now and then and a forecast of rain…a perfect day to do the laundry.  We just filled a couple of machines and will patiently await the finished product.  Today will also give me the needed time to continue working on our web-pages.  I’ve been working on adding pictures and correcting some of the postings to Egypt, Austria, and now Hungary.  I’ve found it to be harder to do than I originally thought to complete this project and I just hope it’s worth the time…  I’ll try and keep you updated as I go. 

Unfortunately with the weather threatening heavy rain and thunder tonight, the Mardi Gras parade marshals are letting us know that they just might have to cancel tonight’s events in New Orleans.  They are telling us (those that weren’t around ) that it very well could be like last year’s schedule, off, on, and off again to finally be rescheduled. 

Noon quickly arrived and Louise went to the pantry to find the pick-ins for lunch.  As she put the can of tuna on the counter to make us a couple of tuna sandwiches, she said “I guess we could go over to the Hard Rock Casino. 

_They’re having their $4.99 buffet…”  Yep, you guessed it, we went for the buffet.  We’re really not into buffets but with it dark and raining, and Louise really liking the fun at the casinos, it just made sense to make her happy.  Of course we received our gaming card which gave us the $4.99 price for the buffet.  Fortunately for me, my buffet was free because of my birthday this month.  I’ll take “Free” anytime…  Following lunch, Louise took $20 and headed over to the penny machines.  By the time I found her she had already won about $10 on top of her investment.  I put in $20 twice and lost it quickly…I love gambling.  A couple of hours later we were heading out to the car and as we passed a couple of machines at the entrance, Louise asked if I might have a couple of one dollar bills.  It didn’t take but a couple of minutes and she was already up to $26 on a penny machine so I pulled up next to her and put in $3 more dollars.  For some reason I got lucky and had my $3 up to $130 in about 15 minutes.  We didn’t pull out right away, but we did after I dropped down to $80.  OK, I’ll take the $40 profit and let’s head home… 

_12 February ‘09 Thursday

A couple of days have gone by without getting to the journal, so I’ve got a little bit of catching up.  Tuesday morning we awoke to a very windy and cloudy day.  Fact is, while we were still lying in bed, it started to rain like hell.  Thank God it only lasted about an hour, but the amount of rain that fell left enough water on the grassy areas to be one big sponge.  This was not going to be a day for sightseeing so we went to the computer and checked for show times at one of the local theaters.  Our choice turned out to be Slum Dog Millionaire.  With all the positive reviews we’ve heard about this movie, we just had to see it.  It was noon when we walked in and just after 2 when we found ourselves ready to head back out into the bad weather…not a thing we really wanted to do. Sooo…  We went back in and took in a second movie.  “He’s Just Not That Into You” was our choice for the second movie.  This was a “girls flick” that I found to be just OK.  It’s not that “girl’s flick’s” are not entertaining, it’s just that this one was just not going to rate high on my list.  Wednesday turned out to be a great day with lots of sun and a noon time temperature in the mid 70’s.  Maybe not a great day to go shopping at the mall but that was something that Louise wanted to do.  Louise wanted to pick up a few new pieces of clothing but it just wasn’t going to happen.  We’ll have to look again somewhere down the road. 

Today was another great day.  We know we’ve got some crummy weather coming and it’s going to last past the weekend.  For that reason I wanted to push forward to do some kayaking.  Last week we drove out to the Gulf Island National Seashore Area and the Davis Bayou.  The Davis Bayou was just too much to leave behind without putting into the waters so today was the day…  By the time we entered the water, we found we had a light breeze coming off of the Gulf.  That wasn’t going to bother us abit, as our plans were to stay in close and paddle the many little pathways through the reeds and trees.  After filling the kayak with air, donning our jackets, and slipping into the water, we now had a chance to explore.  It was an easy paddle as we followed one passageway after another.  The large and small birds were everywhere.  At one point we saw a huge Osprey nest that was still under construction and the Osprey .  As we were rounding a corner through the maze of reeds, Louise almost came out of the kayak.  A HUGE Gator jumped out of the reeds and dove under water 15 yards in front of us.  I only saw and heard the splash of the water but Louise saw “THE GIANT” in action.  We’ve seen a few alligators since we’ve been here in the south,

_but this one was by far the largest.  We were in pretty shallow waters at the time so I really didn’t want to go any further into the path the gator had taken, so we slowly made a turn-around and paddled back out.  I don’t think we would have been in any danger but I didn’t want to push it.  We had a lot of different areas to explore and explore we did.   Another smaller alligator come out of the reeds in front of us but much before we were close enough to get a good look but we were happy enough with that. 

_8 February ‘09 Sunday

Well this is what we did today (went to learn about Jefferson Davis and Beauvoir), what did you do ???

Beauvoir…(BOV-WAH)…”Beautiful view”.  Beauvoir was developed by a wealthy Mississippi planter in 1848.  The land is fronting the Mississippi Sound (the Mississippi Sound is the waters that front the Biloxi area and is separated from the Gulf of Mexico by the thin strip of the Gulf Islands) and took 4 years to complete.  Beauvoir is a single story raised building

_that sat in a complex of 51 acres that included two pavilions, kitchen, carpenter’s shop and residence, foreman’s house, maids quarters, chicken coop, barn, carriage house and harness shop.  By 1877, Beauvoir had sold twice and the new owner a wealthy intellectual, Sarah Dorsey, invited Jefferson Davis to move into the estate and write his memoirs.  By year’s end, Varina Howell Davis joined her husband at Beauvoir after returning from Europe.  The following year Jefferson Davis became the 4th owner of Beauvoir for $5,500.  By 1881 Jefferson Davis had published his memoirs The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government and A Short History of the Confederate States of America.  After Jefferson’s death, Mrs. Davis and daughter were asked to move to New York and write for Joseph Pulitzer and the New York Times.  In leaving Beauvoir, Mrs. Davis knew that she would never come back but wanted Beauvoir to remain as a memorial to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States.

_Today things have changed considerably because of one huge hurricane…Hurricane Katrina.  Of the original buildings, five of seven were destroyed.  Beauvoir is still going through rebuilding, but is complete enough to have tours pass through on a daily basis.

_As of this month, they have spent $4.5 million dollars toward rebuilding Beauvoir by itself…it was a terrific storm that took it down, and the damage was staggering.  The interior painting project is going very slow because of all the detail that they are bringing back.  For instance the details on the walls and ceilings,

_and painting the “oak wood” designs on all the woodwork.  Because of the original woods for the doors not having any natural “grain”, they have diligently painted each and every grain to represent oak on all the natural wood stained doors (this was also done originally).

_7 February ‘09 Saturday

This morning we drove up to the farmers market to see just what we might be missing.  Sure as heck we did find something.   We found some incredible fresh bread that we couldn’t leave behind and we found Loren…  Loren is an African that had a table filled with string beans, Habanera peppers, okra, and a large container of TARO…  Yep, Taro.  Now what do you do with Taro?  That’s all Loren had to hear.  She not only gave us a step by step instruction of how to prepare taro, she gave us a recipe for a dish that she said would tempt us to eat too soon just by anticipating the taste by the smell.  I won’t go into the details of the recipe but it involves pork, okra, a Habanera pepper, turmeric, garlic, onion, fingerling potatoes, zucchini , bell pepper, lemon pepper, and TARO…I can just about smell it now…  Gathering all of our “goodies” and storing them in the car, we pulled the beach chairs and headed down to the parade route.  We weren’t by ourselves, even though we were about an hour and a half ahead of parade time, but they are always telling us that “the early bird gets all the best of the BEADS !!!”.  Yep, we’re really into the beads now.  I’ll fight any little kid on the block to get that small necklace… 

_Well the Mardi Gras Parade started at 1 and by the time it got to us it was about 1:30.  The crowd that was out for today’s parade was much heavier than that of last week’s parade, and thus we didn’t get near as many necklaces. 

_The fun was still there and we will be back for more, whether it’s here or Mobile, we will be back.   

_6 February ‘09 Friday

The first day after arriving in Ocean Springs (Biloxi), we headed out to find the Visitors Center.  It turned out to be in the old train station and right at the beginning of town.  After getting all the usual maps, magazines, and brochures, we also got a listing of our host’s favorite restaurants.  I asked for those that would offer us some of the” local fare”, you know, catfish, shrimp, oysters, and….  Our host also told us about the Farmers Market and the Mardi Gras parade that is set for Saturday.  Well it looks like we are going to have some fun here…  We left the Visitors Center and walked the sidewalks of town to check things out and look for the best location to setup for tomorrows Mardi Gras parade.  Another location that we asked about took us to the Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area.  We were looking for another place to put our kayak in and we found one.  We also found another great campground.  The National Park Service has put together a great visitor’s center that manages numerous hiking trails, bayous, a boat ramp, and a 60 site campground that would rate a 9+ in anybody’s book.  As we were passing over a small bridge, I just happened to look down into the water.  Floating not 10 yards away was an alligator.

_He was just sunning him/herself and not bothering anyone.  Fact is, he had company… sitting on a branch coming out of the water were 5 turtles and they also found the sun very warming. 

_A little further down the road we found the boat ramp.  After checking out of the ramp and the waterways around it we decided that this would be a great place to come back too and do a little paddling.  We noticed a smaller motor home sitting about 50 yards away and it looked like some of those that we saw around us during our time camping in Europe.  Sure enough, upon closer examination, we found that they were from The Netherlands.  Well that’s all it took, we had to meet the Dutch couple that found themselves at the waterfront site here in Biloxi.  Leen and Hanny Struik have been traveling North America (USA & Canada) for some months now.  It is their 2nd time to camp their way through the states in the last few years.  The first time they did it in their son’s minivan and this time they wanted to do it with a little more comfort so they shipped their motor home over.  Speaking of shipping a motor home.. In May of 2005 Louise and I met Bob and Helen Grimm/Winkler at a campground in Larne, Ireland.  We were having a problem with our van and they just happened to be parked at a site 2 over from ours.  I remember that just after we had met, Bob asked if we were "Escapees"...well hell yes, we've kind of "escaped"...  At that time he jumped forward and gave me a big hug.  Catching me completely off guard at the time, I was wondering just what I had gotten myself into...  Anyway, we just (not too long ago) received an email from them and Helen was describing their adventures that they have recently been enjoying.  One of them was camping South Africa, and another was were they had taken a grandson to Japan

_and also Bob and his son had taken another trip back to Africa and camped while visiting the wildebeest migration in Tanzania and seeing the mountain gorillas in Uganda...Now that is camping !!! 

_5 February ‘09 Thursday

This morning we left Louisiana and slowly made our way into Mississippi.  We followed the lesser traveled roads all the way.  First we took LA-36 to Slidell, found a tire shop to top off the air in our rear tires, and then headed east on LA-90 on our way to Ocean Springs (which is just outside of Biloxi).  Just as we were to cross into Mississippi on I-90, we found ourselves detoured.  The detour took us onto a very narrow secondary road that had some really old Oak trees that over hung the roadway and made us duck our heads each and every time we came upon one.  After about 10 miles on our detour we ended up coming out to I-607. 607 they took us back to I-90 and we continued our drive down to the blue waters and the white sand of the Gulf Coast.  I-90 travels right at the edge of the white sand as far as we were to travel today.  Just as we saw Biloxi in the distance we pulled into a pull-off and enjoyed a seaside lunch from the dining room of our coach.  One thing about driving the Gulf of Mexico coastline is being able to see the total disaster remains of the past 3 major hurricanes.  From the moment we arrived by ferry onto Galveston Island until now we have seen total destruction all along the coastline.  Everything from trees blown over or torn completely out, to boats that were thrown hundreds of yards inland, houses and commercial buildings leaning or just plain gone, and hundreds of foundations sitting there wondering if there would ever be another home constructed on top.  Finished with lunch we continue on to Biloxi.  As we traveled this coast road through town, we were blown away by all the casinos we had on each side of us.  Now these were more like the casinos of Las Vegas than those that we see alongside the highways we’ve traveled the last few years.  We just were not aware of the interest for major casinos that we found here, but one thing’s for sure, they’re first class establishments and apparently very busy as they are building at least 3 more that is posted to be opening by the end of 2010.