Movin' on to Mississippi

On Thursday morning we left Fort Pickens, along with Harry and Sally, heading to the other end of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, the campground at Davis Bayou in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Tom, Jean and Kathy had made reservations at Shepard State Park near Pascagoula, MS, but we wanted to stay at the national seashore.

The Davis Bayou campground is an no-reservation campground, so we were taking our chances. I'd called the camp host on Wednesday afternoon and she said they had 15 empty sites at that point. It seemed pretty safe to assume we'd get sites but we were almost proved wrong.

We left Fort Pickens before 9:00 AM, but took our time, first stopping at the Gulf Breeze Publix Market for a grocery stop, then stops at both the Alabama and Mississippi visitor centers on I-10 and, finally, for an interminable fuel stop near Mobile. We got to the campground in mid-afternoon among a flurry of arrivals. There were two trailers in front of us and two Class A RVs behind us at the campground entrance. While I waited in the traffic, Harry and Ellen went off in search of sites. There was not much but we were lucky to find two sites next to each other. They were a bit short, and we had to squeeze Speedy and the trailer into our site with only inches to spare. We were even more fortunate that we did not tarry any longer, as the two Class As behind us got the last two sites and several other campers arrived within the hour with no room in the campground.

After settling in, we got the bicycles out for a ride around the park. Most of the Mississippi Unit of the National Seashore are offshore barrier islands, but they do have several hundred acres at Davis Bayou including the campground and the Mississipi Visitor Center. We rode up to the visitor center, strolled the paths near the visitor center, saw a few new birds (today's birds are the Eastern Towhee and the Horned Grebe), looked in at the boat ramp for a possible kayak paddle if the weather is good and then saw the first alligator of the trip in a pond on the way back to the campground.

It was much warmer and more humid in the bayou than at Fort Pickens and the forecast was for rain over the next few days. So, it was back to camp to have a dinner by the campfire and batten down of for a bit of wet weather.