Day 32: Gautier to Long Beach: Grampies in Sunday School

February 5, 2014

It rained a lot in the night, but inside the tent stayed dry. At 5 a.m. wake-up time we dragged the fly and other bits into the warm bath house and got them nicely drying. Then we unpacked the kitchen stuff (in the Ladies) and got some oatmeal, coffee, and hot chocolate going. Meanwhile we charged electronics at the plug by the sink. It's a good thing 5 a.m. is not a popular hour, because we had stuff everywhere. It was controlled chaos though, and pretty soon we had everything packed and were gone.As always, we left no mess and no sign that we had ever been there.

From Gautier to the Biloxi bridge there was little to catch our attention. We stayed off US90, following mainly a road called the Old Spanish Trail. This had no shoulder, but we found the drivers to be very courteous. This was mostly residential territory, and we again noted how desperately plain the houses and landscaping are. One shock was a local high school. seemingly very new, it was fully a block long and half a block wide. Students must be bussed here from long distances, but still it was an out of place feeling demonstration of huge amounts of money flying around.

Our back roads way to the Biloxi bridge followed one Government Street. This ended up as a main central street of the town of Ocean Springs. Though Ocean Springs s not really have the sort of downtown with shops, restaurants, and happy strolling people, it does have a sort of centre. There, we found a donut shop. as mentioned in a caption yesterday, donuts and pizza are what is accepted here as fresh bakery and we are desperate enough to play along.

This particular shop uses potato as well as wheat flour, and does have some very good donuts. Dodie got one called a Katrina piece, made from dough scraps and invented when supplies were restricted after Katrina.Outside the shop, set into the sidewalk was a plaque for the owners' little daughter, a cancer victim. This plaque seemed to emanate an immense amount of sadness, and the Grampies had trouble keeping it together.

Thanks to Dan Patenaude's blog and a Google map we brought from home, we had no trouble finding the safe, separate bikeway on the huge bridge over to Biloxi. From up on the bridge, we got our first view of one of the interesting things that the Mississippi Gulf Shore had in store. That is, casinos. There are two big ones just over the bridge, and the town has a half dozen of more in total. A trolley shuttle carries patrons from one casino to another, but as with the Alabama shore there was actually no one around.

Beyond the casinos, a truly interesting aspect of this area became immediately apparent. Ground zero of Hurricane Katrina was at Waveland, about 60 km west. 95% of Waveland was destroyed. But at Biloxi there is a strange openness. It reminds us of Dresden, Germany in that respect. All along the waterfront are plaques documenting the historic homes that used to stand there. Normally they say "damaged by hurricane Camille and destroyed by hurricane Katrina".Even where there are no plaques, there are vacant lots. They are strangely park like, with old and obviously well rooted trees standing, and everything else gone. These "vacancies" are pretty much the only evidence of what happened eight or nine years ago. Everything has been perfectly cleaned up and levelled.

The next big thing offered by this coast is the coast. That is, the beach. In Alabama almost all the beach frontage was eaten up by the condo developments. Here, the beach is mostly open and accessible. It is gorgeous, too, all pure white sand. At first we thought that after Katrina the counties must have trucked in sand to restore a bit of beach. But we found the beach extends like this for 30 km. It would be interesting to know the story of what happened to the beach and how or if it was restored. Certainly now it is carefully groomed - by tractors pulling some sort of grooming machine, and it is immaculate, and of course, deserted.

Here is one spot where a piece of America is looking great, compared to Europe. e.g. the same type of beach - along the east coast of Holland, is jammed with thousands of parked cars and bicycles, food stands, beach chairs, beach bars, etc. Here, there are just a few parking spots, and kms of pristine empty beach. It is really, really, something else!

Coming back to something not so great, we were forced to negotiate these lovely kms from the sidewalk, since there is no shoulder on the four lane US90 for the whole length. The sidewalk cracks made the going slower, but actually, it was ok.

At the start of today in answer to the question "where are we targeting for today?" Dodie suggested playing it by ear. In the morning sun, that had a lovely carefree ring. But around 5 p.m., with the temperature and light dropping, the question of where we were going to stop became more urgent. Google identified the Gulf Haven Campground. When we got there we found not a "campground" but a parking lot, full of RVs. But wait, we spotted a little patch of grass and some picnic tables nearby. This could be ok! Wrong. The office was closed, and the self registration stuff had several prominent NO TENTS signs. Since the office was closed, we thought about pitching anyway. But we knew we would not sleep easy.

There were two motels in striking range - both around $100. Eeerrph.

It was Dodie who realized now was the time we needed a church. The GPS located a Methodist church in Long Beach, which is basically where we were. We headed over, and found a youth musical group in a practice. We explained our situation. The group leader phoned the pastor and came back with three options: pitch outside the church in a protected courtyard, pitch in the group leader's yard nearby, or sleep inside in the warm, in a large Sunday school classroom. Only thing, they worried, was their shower working properly! We chose... inside!

The bikes came in with us, electronics got plugged in, and we went grocery shopping nearby! We got back and enjoyed a sumptuous feast of BBQ chicken, cole slaw, chocolate cake, etc etc from the grocery. A little too late, the church people came around with some pizza. Oh well, they said, they would put it in the fridge in case we got hungry later. Meanwhile, musical rehearsals continued. It seems like churches are a last refuge of folk style music, our favourite. We were skillfully serenaded all evening.

Whatever part of this large church complex we are in, it is clean, bright, and large. The spirit shown by the people in immediately taking us in without question, and the spirit of the singing is very impressive. There is no denying whether one shares the belief system or not, there is something very positive going on.

Photos -- on the way

The Mohlers and their potato flour donuts

sophia. The Mohlers continue to raise money for cancer research

The first casino over the bridge, the Golden Nugget

There were many many vacant lots like this one

The Katrina memorial at Biloxi. It is 12 feet high, representing the height of the storm surge here

some Japanese tourists on the other side of the uncrossable highway

Beach grooming. did all this sand stay here during Katrina?

almost all vacant lots were for sale. This seems kind of costly!

The patch of grass that would have been great

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 1,869 km (1,161 miles)

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