Continued greetings from the Gulf Coast.  We are staying at Indian Point RV resort in Gautier, Mississippi.  It is about 10 miles from Biloxi and 5 miles from Pascagoula.  We arrived here yesterday after a short drive of about 130 miles.  I am getting really spoiled with these short trips.  The longer trips we have made to get down here were usually around 300 miles.  With any wind to deal with it can be really stressful driving this beast.

Yesterday we kind of panicked as we didn’t have reservations for our stay in this area.  We called several parks that we found online but they were all taken by...you guessed it Snow Birds!  What we have found is that a lot of northerners spend their winters here in the Gulf Coast.  Anyway to make a long story short we lucked out and found a nice place to spend two nights.  Price is $32 per night with full hookups and 32 channels of HD.  Now that’s living!

We have been looking forward to seeing Biloxi and wanted to spend more time with our friends from Colorado before we part ways.  So we made a date to meet for brunch at one of the casinos on Ocean Dr.  We had your typical casino buffet where we ate too much food that isn’t that good for you to begin with.  We had a nice time with Jim and Lois and gave hugs all around with promises to keep in touch in the future.  Nice people.

Biloxi just blew us away with its beautiful location on the Gulf.  However it was bittersweet to see so many vacant waterfront lots for sale.  You could see where a structure stood but simply nothing but a concrete slab.  They are celebrating the 5th anniversary  of Katrina this summer.  We forget that this storm hit in the height of the summer season with high temps and awful humidity.  The same as most of LA went through.  It was pretty sobering to see just what Mother Nature can dish out to us mere mortals. 

But life goes on and everywhere we looked there was new construction.  Claudia was interested in some of the historical homes that survived or have been reconstructed and we have included a few examples.

Here are some observations that we have noticed in our travels.  There is a tremendous amount of history down here.  Texas was all about Spanish and Mexican exploration and domination.  The farther East you go there is more historical French involvement .  As a result there are many French names that pop up all the time.  It helps that Claudia vaguely remembers her one term of high school French...that’s a joke, Claudia :)  We’ve had fun with that one.  In Texas we saw a lot of Hispanics.  Here we see virtually no Hispanics but a lot of African Americans.  It has been interesting to see the change in demographics.  Oh and did you realize that Arcadians (Cajuns and Creole) came originally from Nova Scotia?  I want to read more about this fascinating bit of info. 

Oh and we are finding that a Bayou isn’t really a swamp but a body of fresh water.  I have been looking for a swamp for 1500 miles.

OK that’s enough of that but it has been a real eye opener for us.  One last thing.  You never want to judge a persons intelligence by their goof ball accent.  You should see the ads on tv down here.  Smart people they just don’t sound like us !

Gotta go as Survivor is on in a few minutes...speaking of intelligent people and intelligent use of our time.

Love always

Grandpa