Gulfport, Mississippi

On the morning of the 13th day on the road, we packed up the car for what truly felt like the 100th time, and hit the road. We were on the return route home.

While the day ahead of us held 490 miles of travel, the first leg from Laurel Mississippi to Gulfport was only 100 miles, an easy 90 minutes away. In all honesty, we could not wait to be out of Laurel. This was the first time during our entire trip thus far; spanning over 4,000 miles, that we felt unwelcome. From the gentleman who checked us into our motel room, to the guests in adjacent rooms, to the waitress at the Waffle House the next morning, people seemed annoyed. Our first impression of Mississippi was not a good one. The good people in Laurel seemed to be the exception to the overall hospitably we had encountered throughout the south. Perhaps we just caught Laurel on a bad day. After all, its nickname is Mississippi’s Hometown. One thing was certain, it wasn’t the entire state. The gal at the Wal-Mart check out in Gulfport was friendly enough.

One of the things I found interesting about Gulfport is that most of the homes and businesses were raised up, some built on stilts as a way of dealing with the tide surges that often accompany hurricanes. On July 21, just seven days ahead of our visit, a tropical storm caused Gulfport to declare a state of emergency. Yet by the time we arrived, there was no lingering evidence of damage.

The sandy beach felt warm beneath our feet. Yet as luck would have it; where we chose to stop and walk the beach was not a place to wade out into the Gulf. The waters were clear enough for us to see that not much more than a foot offshore there was dramatically sharp drop-off, the depth of which none of us was willing to discover. Kiddo and I both tip-toed in just enough to discover how warm the waters were. That was a real surprise. Even on the warmest of days in California, the ocean is cold.

No matter. Walking along the beach was nice. We even managed to bring home some broken yet interesting pieces of shell. For me there is something peaceful about watching the birds along the Gulf’s coast. Their cries were almost haunting.

Gulfport is built on tourism, home to residents with ample disposable income, and second most populous city in all of Mississippi after Jackson. It’s also home to those who earn a living from a hard day’s work at sea. Like the rest of America, it’s a tapestry of lives woven together.

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