Summerdale, AL
Neither of us was feeling great this morning. Dar’s been fighting an unknown bug the past few days and she didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. And I’m having some significant problems with my springtime allergies — certainly due to the amount of pollen in the air down here. I mean, everything’s in full bloom down here and I’m learning that the Old South may not be the place for me in the Spring. By the time we got ourselves and the Bus-House put together for travel, and our requisite visit to the dump station wrapped up, it was almost 10am. Actually, not a bad start for us.
I drove out from the park and found I-12E just a few miles north of the little town of Lacombe. After I-12 meets I-10 we continued east just a few miles to the Mississippi Visitors Center where MS607 intersects with I-10. It was there that we found one of the most impressive State Visitor Centers we’ve run across anywhere in our travels. It was decorated and appointed more like a stately old mansion than a normal visitor center. And, for RV’ers, there are well-separated pull-through parking spaces sprinkled around the property where you could stay overnight. It’s not an RV Park and it doesn’t have hookups, but if you’re traveling through it’s a great place to spend the night for free.
From there we took the scenic route instead of continuing on I-10. US90 follows the coastline through this part of Mississippi, including the towns of Gulfport and Biloxi. This area was devastated by Katrina in August 2005 — nearly wiped out by 16 straight hours of hurricane force winds and a storm surge that exceeded 20 feet. What did we see?
First, it was clear there was a lot of work that’s gone into rebuilding the area. The road itself, the seawall and walking/biking path, and the spectacular white sand beach were among the best we’ve ever seen. Literally, it was over 20 miles of continuous re-built shoreline. You could start on one end and almost run a marathon (26 miles) without leaving the beach. What a spectacular natural resource for the area.
But on the other side of the road the effects of Katrina were still evident. Tattered trees were all over — they’d lost limbs and leaves but had survived and are coming back; some of those that didn’t make it are now wooden sculptures in the parkway dividing the road. There were huge areas of nothing but brush and sets of stairs. These stairs had been the masonry, brick, concrete front stairways to homes along the beach — and these stairs turned out to be the most lasting portion of the homes they were attached to. The homes are gone but the stairs, even today, almost four years later, still remain. Wow!
There were many areas of pilings, stilts, that once had homes built atop them. The houses were gone but the pilings remained. There were a few new houses, a few new mansions (somebody still has some money!), and the casinos have rebuilt with real buildings instead of the fake buildings on floating barges that ended up three blocks inland after the storm. There are portions of the new Biloxi that looks like a mini-Las Vegas. It’s clear the area is springing back strongly.
Then it was back to I-10 to Mobile and across Mobile Bay. Being a larger town I dreaded driving through Mobile on a Friday afternoon. But it wasn’t all that bad. There was even a tunnel — I-10 dives under the Mobile River channel near downtown Mobile — so I could practice by tunnel driving skills. It’s unnerving to have a wall just a foot or two next to the Bus-House at 60mph.
At exit 44 we left I-10 and found a Love’s Truckstop where we fueled the Bus-House. We took on 70 gallons of diesel at $1.89/gallon — the lowest we ever paid.
About 2pm, after about 170 miles, we arrived at our destination, the Escapee’s Rainbow Plantation RV Park near Summerdale, AL. We have a full hook-up site and plan to be here at least a week or so.
T
