Buccaneer State Park, Mississippi

We just spent a week in Mississippi at Buccaneer State Park. This was not one of our most favorite weeks since being on the road, but we can’t complain. The park is very nice, but this is probably not the best time of year to come.

They have a water park but it doesn’t open until Memorial Day. There is also what looks like it might be a nice pool, but it was green and had a bunch of leaves in it. This week was pretty warm so I’m not sure why they don’t clean up the pool and open it. There is a game room that looks like it might have been fun but it was also closed. Even with all those things closed though, the park is very pretty and we had a great campsite with lots of room. It’s also right across the street from the Gulf of Mexico which was very pretty. The worst part though is the bugs!  The bugs were horrible earlier in the week — it was mostly those no-see-ums or gnats I think that can just drive you crazy and there doesn’t seem to be any repellent that deters them. By the end of the week the weather really cooled down and was much less humid which helped very much with minimizing the bugs.

Here are some pictures from the beach across the street:

Jake showing me a little, tiny crab:

Sunset:

One of the highlights of the week was meeting the Newschool Nomads.  Last year while planning our trip, I followed many blogs of other fulltime rv’ing families.  The Newschool Nomads was one of the blogs I followed, and they showed up at the park this week. It was awesome to meet them in person!

We almost lost Fat Cat this week. I was afraid I was going to have to rename the blog!  She got out one night while we were sitting by the fire and nobody seemed to notice she was gone until we were ready to go in and get ready for bed. We looked for her all around our campsite area with flashlights and couldn’t find her anywhere. We prayed that God would return her to us safely. We finally had to just go get ready for bed and hope to find her in the morning. A little while later I heard the train that passes by this campground and I thought about how loud it is and how it must be really scaring Fat Cat. I thought maybe I should go check if she came back because of the loud noise. I opened the door and she immediately bolted inside! She had been right by the door so I’m guessing that the train noise really scared her. We’re all very thankful she is back with us and we’ll have to be more careful about her trying to get out from now on.  Here she is, back home safe & sound:

We had dinner out one night in Pass Christian at a place called Shaggy’s. I enjoyed reading the history of the restaurant. The owner bought the restaurant location just before Hurricane Katrina hit and wiped out so much of the area. Later he was able to start the restaurant and it ended up being a place where all the locals would come to support one another during their re-building years. It was a very friendly and welcoming place and the food was great! There was also a beautiful sunset right after dinner:

We usually try to do most of our sightseeing on the weekends when we’re not working so our plan was to go into New Orleans on Saturday and check it out. This turned out to be a mistake.  Never try to visit New Orleans on the weekend!  We were only able to check it out from the truck while driving around the French Quarter looking for a place to park a big dually truck, which turned out to be impossible. The place was mobbed with people and after unsuccessfully trying to find a place to park for over 30 minutes, we decided we didn’t really want to walk around there anyway.  It didn’t exactly look like a nice place to bring kids. So we left and went back to Gulfport which is not too far from our campground. The beaches there have the beautiful white sand that the Gulf is known for.

Yes!  Wide open spaces to run rather than fighting the crowds in New Orleans:

Next up… a short 3 night stay at a fish camp in Louisiana and then it’s on to Texas!