There must be a law in Mississippi that for every X number of people there must be a Waffle House Restaurant and X is not a very large number. Waffle Houses are almost as numerous as drugstores and every one we pass has at least a few cars in front of it no matter what the time of day. It has become a joke that we'll never starve because there will be a Waffle House in a couple of blocks.

Another local peculiarity in the south is the distribution of dollar stores. You have your Dollar General and you have your Family Dollar. Sometimes right next to each other. Sometimes one will pop up in the middle of nowhere or in the tiniest town where you would swear there couldn’t possibly be enough business.

There is a lot of wildlife activity around our campsite, several different species of birds, some kind of bushy-tailed squirrel that I don’t recognize, and rabbits. Anyone who has ever been to our house knows that we are familiar with desert cottontails, but these rabbits looked more like a cross between a cottontail and a jackrabbit. Here's a photo of two that seemed to hang around our campsite.



They have longer legs than cottontails and hold themselves off the ground higher, their coat is darker, and they are definitely larger. Their ears are not long but their tail hangs down like a jackrabbit’s although it is white underneath. Thanks to Google I discovered that there is a separate species called the swamp rabbit and this is where it lives. Mystery solved.






Today we drove to Pensacola, Florida, to visit the National Naval Aviation Museum. The skies were lowering as we drove out of town and the forecast was for thunderstorms, but neither one of us had thought to bring raincoats. Sure enough, the skies opened up while we were on the I-10 and we drove most of the way through intermittent downpours. Fortunately, when we arrived at the museum, the rain had stopped and we were able to make it inside without getting wet. Much to Al’s surprise, the museum was mobbed with parents and children. I suspect it was the first week of summer vacation for many of them and since it was raining, a nice indoor activity was called for. Interestingly enough, the museum had numerous activities for children, like allowing them to climb through several mockups of Blue Angel fighter planes and other activities which I can’t detail because we gave them wide berth. We have been to so many airplane museums over the years that the aircraft were not especially interesting, but the exhibit galleries around the edge of the museum were fascinating. For example, one featured a reconstruction of a jungle camp set up on a Pacific Island during WWII, another showed what a couple of WWII aircraft that sank in the Great Lakes looked like underwater, on and on. Lots of painstaking details in the smallest things made these most fascinating. We ate lunch in a replica of the officers club at a base in the Phillipines which delighted Al, who was especially interested in all the squadron plaques. A big hit for me was the fact that the Imax theater was showing the Hubble movie, which documents the original launch of the telescope and two of the repair missions as well as showing some of the fantastic images taken by the Hubble. The Imax audio system does a good job with the sounds of a space shuttle launch, and of course they know how to fill that big screen with overwhelming imagery. I was initially concerned about the number of kids that came into the theater with their parents but I have never seen such an attentive audience. There is hope yet if this kind of film can hold the attention of a ten-year-old boy.


One the way back from Pensacola to Ocean Springs instead of returning on the interstate, we drove right along the coast of Florida and Perdido Key, which is apparently quite a tourist destination, with lots of high rise condominium buildings in some stretches, and lovely pastel beach homes in other areas. Here we saw several staging areas for oil spill mitigation efforts at state parks. The road crosses the Alabama state line and ends at the mouth of Mobile Bay where we took a 45-minute ferry ride from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island. Neither of us had realized just how many oil rigs were actually in Mobile Bay. Here’s an image of a laughing gull on the stern of our tiny ferry with one of the rigs in the background.



In addition to the oil rigs, there were several shrimp boats setting oil booms instead of shrimp nets. On the Dauphin Island side, the ferry has to make a u-turn to get into the slip and the captain eased it in so gently that this pelican sitting on one of the dolphins didn’t even get his feathers ruffled.



The areas on both sides of Mobile Bay have extensive wetlands and most of them seemed to have oil booms strung along to keep them clean. We saw a lot of pelicans flying just as we were listening to a segment on NPR about how in Louisiana they are cleaning oil-soaked pelicans using Dawn dish soap. So far these pelicans had been lucky.


This evening while we ate our dinner, an osprey was enjoying his dinner of a nice large fish in a tall dead tree on the edge of the bayou. We didn’t eat particularly well today and I would have swapped him a fish for our dinner in a minute.

Reviewing my posts, I realize that I have not expressed how much we have enjoyed our stay in Mississippi. It would be nice if we had been here earlier in the season before the weather became so hot and humid, but we have found the entire state to be a delightful surprise. The little towns on the Gulf Coast are unexpectedly charming for a resort area and the people couldn't be nicer. Inland, we have been surprised by the quality of the highways and tourist facilities. So far, Mississippi has shown us the best times. Whoda thunk?