Mobile to Mississippi Gulf Coast: June 6 & 7, 2018

Wednesday, we woke to a clear, cool, sunny morning. The hot bugs made a racket as I sat outside enjoying my coffee, so it will be hot this afternoon. Finished up a second load of laundry, filled the RV with fresh water, and did some grocery shopping and a few errands.  We drove through the Oakleigh Garden District in Mobile with stately homes and resurrection ferns shrouding the live oak tree lined streets.  Sorry for the poor photos, but we were in traffic and I was taking them while driving by (no, I was not driving, too). 

I'll take this one!

After our errands in Mobile, I drove south while Jack napped and got a campsite in the Davis Bayou campground in the Gulf Islands National Seashore near Ocean Springs, Mississippi.   A fabulous little campground, all with paved pads, some shade and electric and water for $11 with our National Park Senior Pass.

We headed out to a Lowe's for some RV improvement parts. The locking latch on the big horizontal sliding window over the table has been broken for a while. This window can be opened from the outside, just by pushing and sliding it and is large enough for a smallish person to enter. When I researched replacing the latch, it was a no-go. Have to buy the entire window!!! So, bought a dowel that Lowes cut to size for us and purchased a couple of rubber tips to put on the ends and now we can just insert it into the right side of the window (similar to the way those guards work for sliding doors) and voila, we are secure. 

My DIY security bar for our window

Here it is installed in the lower part of window

Back to our campsite, painted painted the dowel to match the window frame and it looks great, even if I say so myself. A light salad for dinner, a little TV and early to bed with the AC on full blast.

Thursday, we enjoyed another clear, coolish (70 degrees) morning and were able to turn off the AC for a while to get some fresh air.

Thursday, we learned how to shrimp by going out on a shrimp boat. The boat left from the small boat marina and uses a small net – the same type that many small shrimp boats use, as well as the big shrimp boats that use it to test the waters before deploying their big nets. The guide was knowledgeable about shrimping, explaining how they determine when to open shrimp season and he also entertained us with great local stories. One of his favorites was if you know a shrimper (like farmers), they are always crying about the tough finances of the business as they drive around in their $80,000 trucks. 

 They pulled the net in and then described the catch that included lots of shrimp, a couple of fish, a squid and male and female blue crabs. He kept the shrimp in a tank and eventually, everything was returned to the water – no worse for wear. He also explained that professional shrimpers change their dragging depths and places to try to minimize netting anything but shrimp. They do it not only for the good of the critters, but primarily because it costs a lot of time to separate out the shrimp and time is ??????.   A great day to be on the water and we learned a lot.

Female Blue Crab with red claws

Male Blue Crab with blue claws

Different size shrimp

Afterwards, we drove about 10 miles north to a Camping World. We went to have someone look at the RV for two things: Jack wants a new backup camera as our display is fussy, deciding to work or not without any input from us; and a few times, I have gotten a mild shock touching any metal on the RV if standing in damp ground. Unfortunately, they were too busy to do either item.

A nice dinner of stuffed mushrooms and pork tenderloin. The 90 degree temps required the AC to be on all night.