Goodbye New Orleans, Hello Mississippi

Thursday, February 17th - New Orleans to Biloxi 

 The morning featured some last-minute laundry with Mary doing the brunt of the work washing a load or two of laundry. We are slowly getting better at closing up the trailer but it is still taking too long. Over the next few days, we will be doing one day stays so we will have to get better. 

We are heading to Biloxi, Mississippi and then through Alabama to Florida. Unfortunately for us Florida is busy and expensive. We are researching places to stay and we are finding that all campsites are booked. We can find one day here and one day there but nothing for any extended period of time. We did find an interesting harvest host though, Beauvoir in Biloxi, Mississippi. It is a former home of the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. It also happened to be free to stay and directly across the beach from the Gulf of Mexico. 

 We meandered along the coast and stopped for lunch and a play structure in Bay St Louis. It was a beautiful drive along a sandy beach which we were shocked to hear was 26 miles long and completely manmade – the sand dredged from the gulf. 

 We arrived at Beauvoir in time to set-up and take the tour of the historical house there. The house was interesting as it provided a glimpse into life at that time. A separate dining room for children – fantastic idea. Bathtubs where women didn’t submerge their privates for fear it would cause childbearing issues – I don’t know what they thought about swimming. The linseed oil-stained floor which required only a mopping after Hurricane Katrina despite the house being 12 feet off the ground and water raising 2 feet above that – seems like a good idea considering my children spill all sorts of things. 

 We then went for a sunset walk along the beach. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and cold (the temperature has been averaging 14 degrees Celsius with one day above 20) so there wasn’t much of a sunset. The girls met a friend on the beach and we hung out for a while with Bella and her Mom. It was a rainy, breezy night in the trailer.