Happy Anniversary to us!! Yep, today is our 4th year as a married couple....let's see, and working on our 13th year of "hanging out" together. Ed sure has fortitude, doesn't he?!
Well, we're in Florida....arrived yesterday to a cloudy, windy and cold day! Weren't discouraged tho' (and I told people here that!) because we bring California sunshine with us wherever we go! And today dawned......hey, that's right!, bright, clear and sunny! It's still cold tho'.....and windy but I'll take what I can get.
Our one day in Mississippi (day before last) we drove down to the Gulf Coast and along Hwy 90 there. Hwy 90 is a scenic hwy that travels several miles along the coast where there are casinos and beautiful beaches, a resort area where people come to play in the summer months. We drove thru Biloxi and Long Beach (everywhere has a Long Beach). As we traveled further west along the beach, we started to see definite signs of damage still left from Hurricane Katrina. We were told that in the hours before the hurricane hit they weren't expecting to get anything worse than a bad blow. Katrina's path was supposed to miss this area of the Gulf Coast. At the last minute, about a couple hour notice, the hurricane turned and pummeled this coast badly. We could still see snapped off trees and there are a lot of empty slabs along the road where beautiful homes and many businesses had stood. The before and after pictures we saw in a local restaurant were horrifying. There was a building in one picture, in the next there was maybe just the frame or slab. The good news is that they are busy rebuilding. Lots of construction happening down there. All the homes have fresh paint jobs and almost everything is new or rebuilt from the ground up.
We toured Beauvoir (French for beautiful view) which was the home of Jefferson Davis and his family in his later years after the Civil War. It was a beautiful place but it had been damaged greatly also and just recently finished being rebuilt. Luckily the furnishings inside the home were fairly undamaged and just needed touch-up. There had been a beautiful rose garden in the rear which had been tended by Mrs. Davis but not a shred of plantings remained except for the general shape of it and the walkways around it were still there. They will replant new rose bushes sometime in the future and try to make it as similar to the original as possible. The tomb of the unknown Confederate soldier is back behind the house about a mile walk. Many soldiers were buried back there as the home was also used as a rest home for old Confederate soldiers after Davis died and his wife moved out. We love to learn about historical things and the Civil War seems to be something we keep encountering in our many travels. In 2008 we learned many things in Gettysburg, PA and Fredericksburg, VA.
Yesterday was a travel day....on to Florida (here we are!) and then today we visit a couple (Pat and Bill) that we met on our 2009 road trip/cruise to Alaska and back. We met them at a lighthouse in Northern California, talked for maybe a half hour, kept in touch and then found out they happened to be here in Florida at the same time as us. They travel a lot also but just not in an RV. Our campground is not near the coast but Pat and Bill's cabin is so we'll get our first glimpse of the Gulf from the Florida coast today!