Mandi and Paul Venable flew down to Tampa from Nashville Saturday evening. We had a pretty relaxed couple of days. Sunday we headed for the Gulf Coast -- Clearwater and other Beaches. Found a nice place for lunch -- fish tacos for me. I'll check those out almost anywhere we find them and these ranked near the top. Took a quick turn on the beach. Here's the evidence. Actually, there were a lot of people at the beach on a nice Florida-autumn Sunday.
After lunch we roamed northward along the coast, looking only for a Starbucks -- you know, they're everywhere. Well, not along our route. Finally, after turning around for home along a major highway, we found one.
Monday we lunched/brunched at Cracker Barrel and roamed the Lazydays lots looking at the latest in motor homes. And that was it. A nice, relaxing weekend together.
Tuesday, 11/13, we left early, heading for the Florida panhandle. Had in mind a campground right on the beach, but when we called in late afternoon, we found that they rented for $75! That's way higher than anything we've seen, mostly in the $25-$35 ballpark, so we passed on that choice. Settled for a place in Panama City Beach that turned out to be on the low-rent end of the beachfront strip. We made an aborted effort to go to the beach -- no path through the beach highrises and restaurants (turns out that if we'd asked at the office they would have pointed us to their very own path). After 400 miles, we just wanted a place to sleep -- and eat - Susie cooked hamburgers in our very own kitchen.
Getting to PCBeach took us about 60 miles off of I-10 and I was beginning to regret it. Had in mind getting to OK Friday evening and here we'd spent this time and hadn't even seen the beach. However, overnight, I decided why rush it? Let's see something along the way. We were soon rewarded as we meandered west along the beach drive Wednesday morning. There's a lot of new and attractive beach development going west along the coast. Much nicer than some of the older beach towns we've seen. And many good views of the beach and gulf waters. The brochures say great beaches and it looked that way to us. Very little traffic, too, on an autumn weekday morn.
About halfway to Pensacola we jogged north, back to I-10. In recognition of all the Air Force installations in this part of the state, I took this picture at a rest stop.
Saw some billboards for the USS Alabama, a battleship moored in Mobile harbor. That looked interesting, so we stopped (new, old Tuziphilosophy at work). Here, from the Alabama website, is the view you get as you approach it from the east as we did -- very impressive. It's 680 ft. long, 160 ft. high from the waterline. In wartime, had a crew of about 2500 men.
The Alabama began her career doing convoy escort duty in the North Atlantic. This was interesting to me because my Dad did convoy duty there, also. I don't know what ship(s) he was on. He went on to write his PhD thesis on the convoy escort program in WWII. After there the Alabama saw much duty in the Pacific.
Anyhow, we crawled around the ship for a while and took some pictures
By now, it was early afternoon. We had started quite early but only gone 150 miles from Panama City Beach. We decided to spend the night an hour down the road at the campground in Ocean Springs, MS, where we had spent our last night in Tuzigoot, the original. Fifteen months ago we delivered Tuzigoot to the Methodist Mississippi Katrina relief effort. If you burrow way, way down in Older Posts at the bottom of this blog, to August or September, 2006, you can find that report.
It was with some trepidation that we made this stop. Didn't want anybody to think we were checking up on them and didn't want to find that Tuzigoot was not being well used, if that was the case -- unlikely, though. We went by the Ocean Springs United Methodist Church where the relief work in this area is housed and saw that it was still busy -- quite a few cars around, several temp buildings and a couple of campers, but not Tuzi. But, there are many relief sites around, so we didn't really expect to see Tuzi at the one site we knew about.
Last year one of the more impressive damage sites we saw was the destroyed bridge between Biloxi and Ocean Springs. Rebuilding was being held up for bureaucratic reasons. Well, a lot has happened in 15 months and the bridge recently re-opened -- Susie saw a news article in the last couple of weeks. It's only one lane each way now, but you can see the area bouncing back. Saw several signs welcoming people back to Ocean Springs.
The posh residential area fronting the bay is still in pretty bad shape, but there are signs of redevelopment, too. At many places there's nothing but a slab and maybe some bricks and several houses look abandoned. But, some of the lots have been cleared and where several lots can be combined, condo developments have started or are advertized. There are some new homes and refurbishments underway, also.
This looks like it may have been a restaurant and it's still available.
Like I said, we were uneasy about returning here, but are now glad we did. If for nothing else than the chance to eat at The Shed, adjoining our RV park. It was closed the night we were here in 06.
The Shed is described as a Barbeque & Blues Joint, A FamilyFoodDrinkery. The story is that the proprietor spent his spare time, while at Ole Miss, doing dumpster diving -- collecting junk. Back in Ocean Springs, he decided to build a barbeque joint out of his accumulated junk. He also "practiced cooking, smoking, and timing meat to perfection." He developed a SECRET RUB and found the perfect sauce. "The day Brad's baby backs got rubbed with the rub and slapped with the sauce "The Shed" was born and the thunder rolled" (quoting a brochure). Moreover, fans, dubbed ShedHeds, started bringing their junk and adding to the building and its decor.
Weekends there's music.
The food was as good as promised. The rubbed and sauced meat just fell from the ribs and chicken parts. I don't know how they put it on the platter without it falling off. Definitely some of the best barbeque we've come across. We ate early, so the place wasn't jumping, but it was interesting. Lots of Shed Philosophy is posted. Some examples:
Work hard and success will come. Laziness pay (sic) off right away.
Nobody likes me because I'm paranoid.
ShedHeds put the FUN in dysfunctional.
So, if you're ever on I-10 in Mississippi, Wed - Sun, take Exit 57 and eat at The Shed. You, too, can be a ShedHed.'Nuff for now.
Cheers,
Rob and Susie
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