Florida Exodus and the lair of the beaver.

Saturday, March 30, Biloxi, Mississippi

On our 19th day in Florida we make a break for it and escape across not one but two state lines to beautiful Mississippi.

Dogs enjoying the sun waiting to leave.

Biloxi isn’t normally the kind of place I’d chose to go to but Lorraine wasn’t done with the coast and I couldn’t find a park that I liked with available spaces in New Orleans today. We considered staying in Fort Pickens — and an opportunity opened for seconds on recreation.gov (the only way you can book a site at US Government campgrounds) and then slammed shut before we could make up our mind; so here we are in Casinoland. The beach does look lovely, though. And the campground is small, not overcrowded, and has a nice pool. 

The drive here took us to a very weird place. If Retail Consumerism is a religion then we attended today one of the great chapels of this golden god. I had time to read the New York Times extensively this morning before we left — we were in no rush, in fact we didn’t want to leave any later than necessary for fear of arriving in Biloxi before our spot was free. In the New York Times appeared an article on Buc-ees — a “convenience” store writ large, Texas large, and apparently a real cultural phenomenon. I’d call it a massive acid trip of a truck-stop as theme park, but they don’t allow trucks. These stores apparently have 60,000+ square feet and more than 50 gas pumps and a retail sales culture that I’ve searched unsuccessfully to find a metaphor or parallel for comparison with. The newest Buc-ees, and the first outside Texas, has opened along I-10 in Albama along our route to Biloxi.

The place is truly mind-boggling — a peaen to obesity and kitsch on steroids. We had to circle the entirety of the very large parking lot with the trailer in tow before finding a spot to park — yes, it was that busy — and the circling took a full ten minutes as the store was that large and traffic that heavy.

Inside, the place was a riot of crazy signage, people milling everywhere and lining up for food. Buc-ee’s specialize in brisket, jerky, sausage and beaver nuggets ( think candy coated cheese puffs). Their crazy mascot’s face is everywhere and true to the times articles there are stuffed versions of him from the size of a chipmunk to the size of a small blackbear. My first objective was their famous washrooms — these may have been designed by and for Howard Hughes. I have seen washrooms that are unused and brand new that have not been as clean and fresh smelling. Every urinal in the men’s room is in it’s own niche separated by more than foot of tiled wall between; every urinal has it’s own hand sanitizer station. No need to feel crowded or creeped by standing next to Aqualung in these bathrooms. The stalls have sturdy privacy doors along the most private of European water closets. Between the sinks and the stalls and urinals is a space large enough for me to park my truck and trailer.  And shiny clean — the article in the paper indicates these places are cleaned continuously and I have little doubt.

After using the washrooms we wandered the store. They sell the most amazing selections of junk food, beer and wine (apple pie wine — an abomination of conception with no ingredients list) , souvenirs, frozen bait, hunting and fishing necessaries, clothing, purses and other leather goods, and sandwiches and lunch food. They specialize in brisket sandwiches and they have a central station staffed by half a dozen people stocking a continuous supply of standard with and without pickle and onion brisket or sausage sandwiches. I selected a brisket with pickle and onion and an unsweet ice tea. Lorraine had a prepacked roast beef sub with cheese and we both had fried apple pies.

We bought a few souvenirs and enough junk food specialties to last us the rest of the trip and then paid up and returned to eat our sandwiches in the trailer. The value was pretty decent. My $6 brisket sandwich was a good serving size with a fresh slightly sweet bun; The brisket was moist and the Texas-style sauce was neither too sweet, too hot or too acid. Not the best brisket sandwich I’ve ever had but far from the worst. Lorraine’s sandwich had a tonne of cheese and lots of rare roast beef — she couldn’t eat all of it. The fried pie was a large flour tortilla folded and filled with decent apple filling folded and deep fried and then covered in a cinnamon spice and sugar mix that had just a hint of hot smoked paprika — a little sweet for me but Lorraine really liked hers and neither of us left any behind. ( Note — if you have one of these don’t eat and drive, I was very glad to be stationary when mine exploded in my hand.)

After our lunch we got underway quickly and headed across I-10 past the USS Alabama in Mobile Bay, under the tunnel and then back out of town. I-10 was making me weary after such a solid lunch so I bailed at the first crossing of US 90 toward the coast and we meandered through small rural towns towards the Mississippi border. We saw our first rainfall in a week-and-a-half as we crossed the state line and suddenly we were in Biloxi. It was very strange to go from rural bayou country to LED billboards and huge hotels on the beach just by crossing a river. But Biloxi isn’t that big — and still hasn’t fully recovered from

Katrina so we were back on the western outskirts and at our RV park before four o’clock.

I managed to set-up without flooding the trailer ( not that Lorraine actually let me handle the water — and she did have me double check her connection before turning on the tap... ) as the weather continued to turn poorly. We’ll be here until Tuesday to enjoy the beach and see some antebellum mansions before heading on to the Big Easy. 

Tonight’s dinner is the last of the fish from Joe Patti’s — Green Curry Snapper with Jasmine rice.