Monday April 9, 2012

We got up early to get packed and on our way. A really cool sunrise! We are not usually not up in time to see this event!

Our destination today was Fountainebleau State Park in Louisiana. We decided to try to follow the Gulf Coast as much as possible and avoid the Interstate Hwy. We continued west from Gulf Shores past Gulf Highlands to Fort Morgan. This stretch of the coast is mostly houses on stilts rather than high rises. At Fort Morgan, we took the ferry across Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island.

Mobile Bay has many natural gas platforms such as this ExxonMobil unit.

Also some shipping traffic ....

We continued along the scenic bi-ways passing through Bayou LaBatre and finally entering Mississippi around noon.

We stopped at the Gulf Island Seashore National Park for a picnic lunch overlooking Biloxi Bay and the Casinos of Biloxi MS in the distance.

We picked up the beach road in Biloxi and followed it for about 30 miles, marvelling at the continuous strip of white sand beach interspersed with the odd fishing pier or boat harbour.

 

 

This was the first time we encountered evidence of the devastation of previous hurricanes. Well over half of the lots fronting the beach road had "for sale" signs with evidence of the previous dwellings being removed recently. Lots of signs advertising concrete slab removal.  There were literally thousands of lots for sale and no evidence of new construction starting. Probably cheap but tough to get insurance today.
 
We travelled several of the bi-ways through bayou country, entering Louisiana and arrived at Fountainbleau State Park at around 3:30 pm.

 

We were really surprised when we saw how cool our cottage was. Obviously these are new construction and were nicely furnished and equipped.

 

 

We really enjoyed the waterfront porch and rockers that afforded a great view of Lake Pontchartrain and the 24 mile causeway across the lake to New Orleans.

The sunset was great ... here is a highly processed HDR rendition (excuse the watermarks - I only have the trial version installed on this computer)

We tried to go into Manderville for a late supper (7:30) but all of the restaurants we tried were already closed. We ended up at the Winn Dixie buying some tenderloins to cook at the cottage. The swamp noises were at a peak when we returned home!