Day 16 – Biloxi Mississippi

We were in no rush to set off today as we didn’t have a great deal of distance to cover until our next, and penultimate, destination on this trip. Biloxi was about 178 miles away, although we crossed three state lines – Florida, Alabama and Mississippi to get there. It shouldn’t have taken more than about 3 hours  if it hadn’t been for the traffic (and traffic lights) on the first 50 miles of the journey. We went through Destin West, which looks rather like Benidorm-on-the-Gulf, before reaching Interstate 10 which we followed for most of the rest of the journey. 

We clocked the deceased-armadillo-of-the-day at the halfway mark around 90 miles – it was clearly playing hard to get today. The largest place we went through was Mobile which is a large seaport and has the WWII battleship Alabama moored as a museum ship. 

Apart from that the trip was uneventful and aside from a last minute satnav malfunction we got to the hotel without too much trouble. It’s an old-style motel badged as a Best Western and seems to be perfectly comfortable. It’s also close to the sea although that  can only be reached by a relatively short walk and a rather hair-raising crossing of a six-lane highway. The pedestrian crossing lights allow about 30 seconds to cross which they count down as you go. While we were waiting we noticed a grizzled oldster at the other side waiting to cross and had a small bet as to whether he could make in within the allotted 30. He cheated slightly by taking off like an arthritic hare about 5 seconds before the light turned to green and he actually made it to his side before we reached ours. He’d obviously had lots of practice.

The other side of the highway seemed to be a replica of Las Vegas with enormous casinos lining the road. 

Having survived the crossing we made for the Small Boats Harbour which provides moorings on one side for commercial fishing boats and on the other, for privately-owned pleasure craft. Overlooking the harbour was our destination, McElroy’s Harbor House seafood restaurant. The place  is built up on pilings so it has a great view over the harbour but it also serves the practical purpose of ensuring the place doesn’t get washed away when the hurricanes come in.

The meal was fine, although not the best meal we’ve had over here. The oysters were up there with the best but the seafood platter loses out to Wintzsells. On this occasion, Mark’s balls were a bit crispy but that may be due to the amount of time we’ve spent on the road. 

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It was delightful sitting out on the restaurant balcony on a balmy evening, watching the sun set over the Gulf as the pelicans glided by on the warm breeze while we reflected on our trip. The bike part was undoubtedly the best but having the car enabled us to cover more ground and arrive refreshed and ready to explore (albeit that the exploration never seemed to take us much further than the nearest seafood restaurant and bar!).  When we first met in primary school all those years ago who’d have thought that we’d be sitting here in Biloxi, looking out over the sea, eating and drinking too much and talking about all the places we’ve been and the miles we’ve covered in this amazing country. It still remains so familiar yet so alien at times. We’ve now seen all the parts that we wanted to see when we first made our plans about ten years ago. So I don’t suppose we’ll be coming out here again together, which is sad in a way but there’s a satisfaction in the sense that we’ve accomplished what we set out to do and its now time to turn to other things. 

Tomorrow we drive back to New Orleans. It’s only about 77 miles and we’ll go straight to the airport and drop the car off. After that we’ll spend about the next 24 hours travelling so there’ll be no blog posts. I’ll write a final summing up on the trip once we get back.