Louisiana to Tampa

March 14^th – we left New Orleans and headed east along US 90 into Mississippi. 90 hugs the coast for the most part, passing through Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula, which may be Jimmy Buffets home town, but I’m not sure, I don’t remember. Neither does he. Anyway we passed a lot of shrimp boats and stopped at Jefferson Davis last home as president of the Confederacy, “Bouvier” where we forgot to pay our entrance fee but made up for it by buying postcards and shot glasses in the gift store.

There are a lot of casinos in MS, especially the Biloxi area. Biloxi also has a light house which I photographed as we drive by. It’s not a real impressive lighthouse, so I think my photo does it justice because it’s not a very impressive photo.

We camped at the Gulf Islands National Seashore campground, which is not on the seashore. The only way to actually see the islands is by boat. The van does a lot of things but floating isn’t one of them. Here is our camp spot.

March 15^th -  The next day we saw an actual alligator in the wild and took a photo of it! I was going to wrestle it but I couldn’t get it to come over to where I was. We also saw this cool Alligator Xing sign, but didn’t see and of them xing.

Later I did get the van to float across the mouth of Mobile Bay. Below is a photo to prove it and also a photo of some gulls that were hitching a ride and a photo of a shrimp boat and an oil rig, two things in abundance in this area. The other photo is me and the little woman on the ferry.

We stayed that night at a great little RV Park on the bay at Perdido Key about a mile from the Florida – Alabama border. Our camp spot had its own little wooden deck and we enjoyed our cocktails watching the dolphins play in the bay as the sunset.

Let’s just say the weather has been less than ideal, ranging from partly sunny with gale-force winds to cloudy but not quite as windy to raining with gale-force winds to just flat out pouring. This day was partly sunny with gale-force winds. I took this photo of FL Route 399 from the van as we drove down the road trying to keep from being blown off it. That white stuff is drifting sand!

March 16^th – We got up and rode our bicycles to the FL/AL line were we took these photos, had breakfast at a “Waffle House”, had a bloody mary at the world famous Floribama lounge, which several fellow travelers had told us about. Now you know about it too. Be sure and stop there next time you’re passing through. We stayed the next two nights at the Holiday Travel Park on the Gulf in Destin, FL. This place could be the locale for another Chevy Chase travel adventure. It has about 500 spaces, (some of which actually front on the beach), a store, an activity center, a pancake breakfast every Saturday morning, a huge outlet shopping mall down the street and high-rise luxury condos up and down the beach one either side. The sites all have cable TV hookups and some have phone hookups and, of course, they all have the standard sewer, water and electric (20, 30 & 50 amp) connections. Here is our spot. Pretty impressive, eh? Oh yeah, don't miss their web site at www.campgulf.com!

March 18^th – We continued across the FL Panhandle in the gloomy rainy weather and camped in Econfina River State Park, south of Tallahassee on the Gulf. On the road I took a photo of these seagulls after I took the time to train them to balance on one leg on the railing. Next we had to stop for a train called “Apalachicola and Northern” to pass. It took about an hour so I took this photo. I think they should shorten the name up to “A&N”, kind of like B&O on the Monopoly board. It rained all night. Here is where we stayed.

It rained all day today.

March 19th - Tonight we are staying at the Holiday Inn near Tarpon Springs, not too far north of where we will be spending the next couple weeks. I hope it gets sunny.

 We’ve logged very near 3000 miles on the van since we left San Diego and are having a great time.