An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings
Playing “Tour Guide”
Since the Mr and I had been here back in 2002, we thought it might be nice to take Ick and Short Person on a drive this afternoon. After an amazing lunch at The Shed in Ocean Springs,
some of the better bbq we’ve had, but contrary to some folks opinion, not THE best…but darn close, we headed west down U.S. 90, to see what wasn’t here anymore. The answer turned out to be…..A LOT!
We had visited Beauvoir on our previous visit, and were quite impressed. We also read that Katrina had totally trashed the place. Honestly, we didn’t expect to see it standing, but I’ll be darned, there it was, so we pulled in to take a tour since Ick and SP had never seen it. There was some balking by the males of our party, but afterward, they were both glad us girls insisted. If you want history about the refurbishment, go read it. It’s quite impressive how much they were able to do over a 13 month period of time. What really annoyed me, was it wasn’t Americans who donated their time and efforts to restore a piece of American history, it was a team from Great Britain.
I wasn’t able to take any pictures inside, because my phone does an auto flash thingy, and I’ve yet to figure out how to turn it off. Ick’s camera bit the dust, so he didn’t get any either. But here are a couple from outside:
A picture of the pictures that were taken a few days after Katrina:
At one time, there were more buildings on the property. Right now, there are a couple of replicas of the buildings that once dotted the area. One is a replica of the library….
There was this….pully looking thing attached to what appeared to be a bell. Everyone kept walking off and leaving me, so I didn’t really get a good look at it…..
After leaving Beauvoir, we took a drive towards Gulfport. I remember a whole slew of beautiful old homes. What I saw was a lot of very empty lots for sale, and one Waffle House sign, with no Waffle House attached. It was quite depressing, but things have been cleaned up pretty well. I know there is a lot more work to do, but the residents we’ve spoken to are quite proud of their “bounce back”. Can’t say as I blame them. There’s a lot of new buildings, and more going up. One thing I must say, other than the half destroyed buildings, it seems to be a lot cleaner than I remember it.
Tomorrow we’ll head home, but ya know….I’ve no doubt, we’ll be coming back in the not too distant future!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
