Saturday, May 21 - We left the Big Easy about 9:00 this morning, heading East. We found our freeway without incident, after a quick stop at the Winn Dixie and McDonalds (for Joe's soda), and came across the end of Lake Pontchartrain. We had water on both sides of us. I looked out my window and saw what I thought was our next bridge, and it looked pretty steep and high, but it turned out to be a roller coaster. Whew! That was a relief.
As we were driving along the highway, I was checking every creek, canal and river for alligators, and I did see one swimming along in a brackish pond. We had our first bird hit the window this morning, so we added to the roadkill on the road. We came past this nice little green area, I'm sure it was quite swampy, just as we crossed into Mississippi, so we said goodbye to Louisiana. We had a good time there.
This is another state full of bridges, and these have really nice walking/running paths on them. They seemed to get a lot of use.
We drove Highway 90 right along the coast -- a beautiful drive! There was street parking right along the beach so we finally pulled over, and I finally got to get my feet in the Gulf! We were in the Bay St. Louis/Pass Christian area here. I dropped the camera in the sand here so I didn't get any pictures of us at the water's edge. Fortunately, the camera seems ok, after Joe used the blow dryer and eyeglass cleaner on it.
We could imagine hurricanes blasting into this area, but there were sure some beautiful beachfront homes along this drive.
Some of this beach area was cordoned off and posted with a sign that the Least Terns were nesting.
Last year we drove past many snow fences in Canada and Montana. This year, we are seeing sand fences. We prefer the northern routes over the southern ones -- the humidity has caught up with us, and it is supposed to be 90 here tomorrow.
Mississippi has a pretty nice piece of the Gulf Coast. We saw gas prices in Mississippi of $3.42 today. Unfortunately, we didn't need gas then, and now we are back to the $3.77 prices. We are hoping Florida will be better. The Biloxi beach was nice, as well, and there was a Hard Rock Cafe & Casino right along the coast, which I thought looked very interesting and worth a stop, but alas, we drove on past.
We are always checking out the bridges, and in this area, we saw a railroad bridge that has a rotating section to allow boats to pass through. We didn't know if this was an inactive railroad and this was a permanent position, or if it does still actually rotate. Sure hope a train doesn't come along unexpectedly! It didn't move while we were passing.
The color of the soil always surprises me in this part of the country, although I know Georgia has really red clay. This is a nice contrast to the white beach. As Joe is driving along, gawking out one side, then the other, I'm thinking he's practicing his NASCAR driving again -- this time it's the blocking. I'm sure the people behind us keep hoping we will turn off. So far, no one has reported him for erratic driving -- at least that we know of -- but there would have been opportunities today.
As we came through Mobile, we spotted a Carnival cruise ship in port -- the Elation (which we have actually cruised on). We would have liked to have just got right on it and went wherever it was going. That's the first cruise ship we've seen, although I think we just missed the one in New Orleans.
Then we went through the Mobile tunnel, which actually goes UNDER the Gulf of Mexico. That's amazing to me.
Just after we came out of the tunnel, we passed a Battleship Memorial Park, which looked interesting.
There were several ships and planes on display, including a B-52, which Joe is always interested in examining. We didn't know anything about it, but maybe next time we come this way we can stop and tour it.
We got back off of I-10 and came the scenic route down Hwy 98, then 59 and 42 to Gulf State Park, near Orange Beach which John had recommended. We passed through the very pretty town of Fairhope on this route, and it had lots of blooming flowers at every corner. Looked like a very pleasant place to live.
We got to the state park just after 3:00 and lucked out with getting a spot. There's a big music fest in town tonight, expecting a crowd of 35,000, just up the highway about a mile, and this campground was very nearly full. This music fest is called "The Hangout" at Gulf Shores, and we could hear the music and applause from our camp site. We rested for a while, then drove into the town of Orange Beach, but decided John had really meant this beach along here, which is a national seashore. The beach is gorgous, with white, sugary sand, and the waves were rolling in with a pretty good surf. There was even a wedding getting ready to start, right on the beach. We saw the arch and chairs set up, and the bridal party as well, including the bride getting ready to walk across the beach.
We plan to take our lawn chairs and have some beach time tomorrow, after we drive over to Pensacola to the Naval Museum. It's been many years since we spent any time on the gulf beaches (since my kids were young). We enjoyed our drive today and are looking forward to getting into the water tomorrow.
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