Friday, January 23, 2009

The Final Frontier

We did the last leg of the frontier road, the Natchez Trace today. After leavin' Rocky Springs Campground we headed south to Port Gibson. Port Gibson was declared by General Grant to be to beautiful to burn. Outside Port Gibson is the ruins of the Windsor Plantation, a 21,000 acre cotton plantation. The home must have been beautiful judging by the remaining columns.

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This home was built with all slave labor and had 'only' 8 bedrooms.





Here I been blabbin' about The 'Trace' and I aint' shown the first picture of the durn' thing. Well here's a couple of pics for ya.

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This is what the 'Trace' looks like at the northern end.




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This is more at the southern end down towards Natchez. Here it is eroded and sunken due to the soft loamy soil.



Since we finished up the 'Trace' we've slowly been making our way to the coast. We were here right after 'Katrina" in 2005 when we were doing cleanup and we wanted to see how the Mississippi coast had progressed. Besides that we were still freezin' our butts off. Some rebuilding has occurred in 3 years but most of it is commercial, along US 90, that was once lined with stately homes, there are just slabs today. Remnants of what was once million dollar homes. By our guesstimate 95% is still not rebuilt.

On the way south we stayed in a Mississippi Water Park, PA of coarse, very nice, woodsy, full hookup, lakeside, 90 channels of cable TV, all for $11.50. Then we made it to the coast and found a park in Long Beach, MS. ,PA, W,E & Sewer for $12.50. Our neighbors there told us that today was 'Senior Day' at the Hollywood Casino and seniors eat for 1/2 price at the buffet, so it was off to gorge ourselves at the Casino. Really good food and too much of it. The next day we didn't know where we were headed except east and stayin' along the shore. We wound up down the road about 15 miles at Gulf Islands National Seashore. They have a nice campground with water & electric for $16 a night.

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Guess who's making a scratch apple pie?




The camp is so nice we decided to stay a second day and again our new neighbors asked if we wanted to go to the Casino for Buffet, $23.50 and we got Players Club cards which gave us $10 each credit to play slots, Linda came away with $9 and me $8. So we had some fun and both ate for $6. I think this is the place to be in the winter, our neighbors say you pick up a little book and it lists all the deals at the Casino's, 2 for 1, free play money, discounted meals, sounds like heaven. All we got to do is get someone, I won't mention which of us is older, a Golden Age pass at 62 and we can stay here for $8 a day, eat ourselves till we pop, and gamble with their money. On certain days they give $20 free play money when you eat, so if luck would run right we could eat for free, gamble a little with the casino's money, and win some to pay for our site here. Well we'll see what tomorrow will bring.

Hope to see ya down the road as were

Dancin' on the Wind.

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