How Long Would It Take You to Get to the Beach?

Say you quit your job and could go anywhere you wanted. How long would it take you to get to the beach? Two days?

That’s the way Tracy and I feel, normally. But of course last March when we quit wasn’t normal in any way. So here we are, in late October, and we finally made it to the beach!

We drove through Louisiana entirely too quickly; next time we’re around here we’ll stay and explore. The upside is that just a couple of hours over the state line into Mississippi is the beautiful beach-front areas of Pass Christian, Gulfport, and Ocean Springs where we are camped for the weekend.

I took the above pictures when we stopped on our drive west on Highway 90, which runs right beside the Gulf, with pull-offs and picnic tables and jet-ski rentals. Yeah, there are casinos and the Jeff Davis homesite, but there are also amazingly isolated stretches of white sand and beautiful Gulf water.

We stopped for just a few minutes because it had been a long travel day and we still needed to get to our campground and deal with any obstacles there (none, thank goodness, other than an overly friendly camp host who wouldn’t let us back into our site until we acknowledged how clean the campground bathhouse showers are).

But those few minutes on the beach were glorious. They put me smack dab in the middle of our dreams of beach living this winter in Florida, including eight weeks on two keys.

Living barefoot, in bathing suits, sunburned, with sand in the Airstream and not caring. Come on.

Davis Bayou

We’re working our way there. Right now, we’ve at this campground in Mississippi and have been here only one night, so I’ll post about it more after the weekend.

Already though I know this is a special place. This morning I stepped out without my phone just to check the weather; the radar said storms but Banjo and I said, Let’s Walk.

We saw a really big otter in the bayou who poked his head far out of the water to watch us watch him, and when he went under we saw a long back and tail—bigger than the glimpses of river otters I’ve seen before.

We saw raccoons wandering through the picnic areas and chatted with a Boy Scout group leader who said they’d been woken twice in the night by fighting raccoons (a scout left his trash out). Herons, egrets, turtles. I’m looking forward to some long walks with my camera.

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Back with the Weekend Warriors

We are, though, back in a regular campground with those weekend campers who parade around the loop on their scooters and with tiny barking dogs.

Last night the big three-axle, fifth-wheel trailer parked across from us had its outside lights on and its outside TV on (I’m not making this up) late into the night when the campers weren’t even there. You leave your TV on in your living room when you’re not watching it and walk around your house? Okay, fine. Outside at a campground, though?

Evidence of RV Idiots

I should call this blog, The Creative Whinging of a Camper. Last complain for this entry, I swear.

Tracy and I subscribe to a daily newsletter for RVers, with mechanical advice and camping tips and spotlights of RVers. This was today’s front page.

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Recently the editor had published two stories about being Black and camping, and the comments those stories received were so vile that he took them off the e-newsletter. Now he’s changing when the newsletter is posted so he’ll have time to delete the hate-filled ones.

I’m guessing the audience of subscribers is the Male, Stale, Pale guys (thanks for that term, Gavin) who have time on their hands enough to read an RV newsletter every morning and write in. The demographic is easy to guess. I’m also hoping that these are the weekend warriors we find at state parks and RV resorts, not the younger adventurers we hope to meet out west.

In the meantime, I’m glad the voice of RV publishing represents the good folks out there.

You guys stay safe, and vote.