Mississippi Adventures

Before we had kids, Courtney and I loved to just get in the car and explore somewhere new. Now, with kids, we don't do it as much. When we first moved to Mississippi, we explored a little bit, once McKenna was born, it was the end of exploring. It was nice to stay in the car in the air condition, but it was too hot to get out of the car to really look around. So, finally yesterday, I brought up to Courtney that we needed to explore a little bit and that brought us to the Bay St. Louis and Long Beach area.

We planned on only going to Long Beach and going to a Mexican restaurant that we heard was really good (Juan Tequila's) and find this 500 year old tree(The Friendship Oak). Once we got to Long Beach (which is about 20 miles or so away from Biloxi) we decided to go a little further and go up to Bay St. Louis. Take in mind, this is the area that was hit the worst when Hurricane Katrina came rolling it. So driving around the coast was so sad even after all this time. Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast in 2005 and you can still see where houses were at one point. Even in Biloxi, you see steps in an empty field leading to nothing. We saw driving to Bay St. Louis, a full chimney, but no house around it. It's all so sad.

Once going over the bridge into Bay St. Louis, we drove around downtown and after seeing all the small shops they had there, we decided to walk around a bit. We didn't stay long due to our hungry kids, but it sure will be a place we will start to visit more often. After some lunch, we headed to The University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Coast to see the Friendship Oak.

The Friendship Oak Tree is 500 plus years old and is overlooking the Gulf of Mexico from the college campus. It was a beautiful sight when we pulled up to it and all I could think of, only if this tree could talk. It's survived many hurricanes, Katrina being the worst, and has seen countless other things. It was something we couldn't just drive around, I needed to get out and take some pictures.

 

 

 

 

We couldn't ride around the coast without making a trip to the beach. So after a little time exploring the Friendship Oak, we headed off to the beach. McKaila was very excited to go run around on the beach, but she wasn't too happy when we told her it was too chilly to take off her shoes and socks so she could go walking in the water. After she got over that, she was happy to keep her shoes on and walk in the sand and look for shells.

It was a beautiful and awesome day on the coast and really looking forward to exploring more of the coast with my beautiful family.