Apache Junction Seekers

Al and Linda enjoy visiting new places and having new experiences. In 2006, we spent 4 months in Europe and originally created this blog to keep friends and family informed. After a long delay, I'm trying to catch up with what we've been doing since then and hope to carry on into the future.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

In October of 1994, Smithsonian Magazine featured an article on the Mississippi artist William Anderson which captured my fancy. I clipped the article and have been carrying that article around for almost 16 years in the off chance we would ever get to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. If not for that article, we would never have come to Ocean Springs, Mississippi and that would have been a real shame.

Of course, there was the little matter of the oil rig explosion which was going to foul the beaches from Louisiana
to Florida, but other than worrying about competing for RV space with thousands of volunteers, that wouldn’t be a problem for us since we rarely walk on the beach anyway, certainly not when it’s 95 degrees and 85% humidity. The only thing we were truly concerned about was whether we would be able to eat shrimp. As it turned out , there was no oil on the beaches, although to listen to media you’d believe otherwise, no hordes of volunteers and the shrimp boats were still going out every day, cruising up and down just offshore, hauling in those tasty Gulf shrimp.

By pure chance, we ended up in the campground at Gulf Islands National Seashore, which was only perhaps a quarter full.
The ranger said this is because they don’t take reservations and don’t have all the amenities like wifi and cable TV. They also don’t have a beach, but as I said before, that’s not a problem for us. The National Seashore administers a chain of barrier islands about ten to fourteen miles off the mainland, stretching from just west of Ocean Springs all the way to Pensacola, Florida. We’re just lucky that the National Park Service took over a former state park here in Ocean Springs for its headquarters and maintains a campground here. With our Golden Age pass, it cost us a whopping $8 per night.

Here's a photo of the campground with the big live oak tree between the camera and our motor home, which doesn't normally glow but it was a bad sun angle. Sorry about the image quality.





Besides eating shrimp, our first priority was the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in the historical downtown of Ocean Springs. Walter Anderson is an underappreciated American artist who spent his entire life here in Ocean Springs or on
one of the barrier islands communing with the nature that he captured so wonderfully in his idiosyncratic painting. He not only painted, but he worked in pottery with his brother and the Shearwater Pottery is still a thriving business. He was born in 1903 and died in 1965. The museum has a wonderful video on his life and work that does an excellent job of wordlessly connecting the forms and colors of his environment to the forms and colors of the works he painted. His masterpiece, however, has got to be “The Little Room”, which is just what it says, a little room, which was disassembled and installed in a corner of the museum. Walter had “issues”, like so many artists, and ended up living in a little shack near his family but not allowing anyone into this little room. Apparently after he died was the first time his wife went into this room in which every square inch of ceiling and walls is decorated with his recurring motifs in a manner that defies description. To me, it is one of the most moving pieces of art I’ve ever seen, one that involves the viewer deeply, and one that I suspect you could see many times and still see something new. When visiting a museum, I always say that if there are one or two pieces that really grab me, it was worth the visit. Walter Anderson’s little room is more than one or two pieces and made the trip worthwhile. If you’re interested, you can go to walterandersonmuseum.org and see images of some of his work. As always, though, the real thing is best.


Ocean Springs is at the east end of a 26-mile long stretch of white beaches that goes west past Biloxi and Gulfport
and ends at Pass Christian, near the entrance to St. Louis Bay. These communities are not large and they have seen a lot of hurricanes, including, of course, Katrina. US90 is a four-lane meander along the beach from one end to the other, a pretty low-key drive despite several widely-space high-rise casinos, past marinas and business areas, past long stretches of residential neighborhoods facing the beach. You can see the damage in the residential areas, lots where there is only a concrete slab left, an obviously newly-rebuilt house on stilts, or maybe one under construction. Even in downtown Ocean Springs, which is well back from the beach, there was a lot of flooding. The original visitor center here in the National Seashore was completely destroyed but has been rebuilt to new, environmentally sensitive specs. Everyone here has their own hurricane story, just like in Galveston, but here they are also worried that business is way down and they would like the tourists to know that it’s safe to go in the water.



There are a lot of live oak trees here, although not as many as before Katrina.


Along US90, a number of trunks
of downed trees have been carved into sculptures, called Katrina Trees. Here are a couple.


















We went looking for shrimp in Ocean Springs and discovered you buy it on the street corner or on the dock.
We had read that the price of Gulf seafood had sky-rocketed immediately after the oil rig explosion, but apparently it settled down again because the product was very priced lower and was even better tasting than the shrimp we bought in Galveston.

On Saturday we took the advice of the ranger at the visitor center and drove to Pass Christian for the farmer’s market,
which was about 30 miles, but it was a nice drive along the beach. Along the way we saw signs for Ruston peaches, which I had read about, but pretty soon the signs were aimed at people coming the other direction and we hadn’t seen the stand. Dang. The market wasn’t very big, but I wish I had felt like doing real cooking because there were at least three different kinds of eggplant for sale at different booths. As it was, we bought some seriously overpriced sweet corn to see if it was really better than what we’d had the night before from the supermarket, picked up the last of the tomatoes from another stand, bought some wonderful blueberries (who knew they grew them down here?), decided to try boiled peanuts, and Al was seduced by the lady who had miniature pecan pies. On the way back, the peach man was just setting up, so we pulled in and bought a small basket’s worth. Customers were stacking up behind us, and when we went past him the next day, he was surrounded by cars so the word must have been out. Ruston peaches are small and are picked ripe, a special variety developed for Louisiana and they are pretty doggone good. We decided not to bother with boiled peanuts again or with the overpriced sweet corn, but the blueberries were just fine on our breakfast granola. The pecan pie was divine, probably the best I’ve ever eaten.

At BB’s Po’Boys in Ocean Springs we had the best shrimp po’boy yet, along with a fine oyster version and an excellent seafood gumbo. Oh yeah, they had a really good bread pudding with rum sauce too. The waitress assured me it was perfectly legal to drive after consuming the rum sauce because the alcohol was all boiled off, but I’d say the cook must have been happily inhaling deeply when making this because there was a lot of rum taste left. Not that that’s a bad thing…… We told the waitress that we were eating our way around the country and she pleaded to come with us. I don’t know why you’d want to leave this area, though.

Al got to looking at the map and realized we weren’t that far from New Orleans. We had avoided even driving
through it on the interstate with the motorhome, but we decided to drive in the car to see what we could see. If tourism is down, I’d hate to see what the place looks like when it’s booming. Of course the narrow streets in the French Quarter don’t help the congested feeling, but the ambience is lost on me. Every other store has signs out for mango margaritas, the rest are hawking strippers or t-shirts. Here's Bourbon Street.







We also drove through the upper ninth ward where there are still some houses with the big X symbols we all know from TV
showing whether anyone was still in the house, etc., during the worst of the flooding, but many of the houses on the main street had been repainted at least, although who knows what they looked like inside. Then we drove through the Garden District, which was exactly the opposite, all the nice huge homes, although still somewhat run down looking. Al had his mouth set for another shrimp po’boy but
we couldn’t find an open po’boy joint outside of the French Quarter where there was no parking available had we even wanted to go there. Happily we did stumble on Stein’s Deli in the Garden District. Afterward, I found it on all the usual foodie sites with rave reviews and we would second those reviews heartily. We had one muffaleta sandwich and one Tuscan panini. The panini was a bit small, but packed with goodness and the bread was excellent. Good thing it was small because the muffaleta was almost enough for two by itself. For those of you unfamiliar with this sandwich, it is supposed to be made with a round Sicilian bread called muffaleta which features sesame seeds and is filled with what they call olive salad in these parts, which is chopped olives with some red peppers and some kind of dressing, this heaped on top of Italian deli meat and cheese. Our muffaleta was a small loaf about 8 inches in diameter with an excellent crust and flavor. In the grocery store you’ll see something called muffaleta but it is more like an oversize hamburger bun. Stein’s bread was phenomenal, as was the business they were doing. It was a flying trip to New Orleans, but we saw what we wanted to see and we had a good meal. Who could ask for more?

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