Dirty Water but a Nice Day

Monday was a disappointment, but at the same time, a good day.

It was spring break here, the kids and Tori were off from Thursday through Tuesday. Between stuff we had to do, and the weather forecast, we picked Monday. Tori and I were taking a drive, just the two of us, a road trip out to find some beach.

John on the Gulfport, Miss. beach.

We hadn't been to the beach since we left the island. Even in Oregon trips to the coast weren't just an outing, they were a necessity, almost a pilgrimage. From Albany, the Oregon coast was about an hour drive. It was beautiful, rugged coastline, with quaint beach towns catering to tourists in funky, cheesy ways. The water was – bracing? Try freezing. You couldn't walk barefoot in the surf for more than a few minutes before the cold was painful. You'd occasionally see one or two people surfing – clad in wet suits – but I can't remember ever seeing anyone just wading into the waves and swimming. Too cold.

Still, we loved visits to the coast. Tori in particular needed them.

Moving to St. Croix, of course, was paradise. Instead of an hour drive, it was three minutes to one of the most beautiful beaches on the planet. The water was as warm as a bath. I'm not much of a swimmer, but even I could float in the blue, blue, blue crystal clear water, bobbing in the swell.

So we were excited for the chance to have a road trip to find the Gulf Coast. I'd heard about it – white sand, warm water. We were aiming for the Mississippi shoreline, driving down the shore highway to see what there was to see.

First, Weather Underground really let us down. The weekend was supposed to be rainy. So the sky was sunny both days. Monday was supposed to be clear and warm. It was cloudy and overcast all day, and the temperature never cleared 65.

As we crossed Bay St. John and headed down the coast highway, the water looked murky, lead gray. There was a white sand strip on the south side of the highway. The north side was mostly a long collection of strip malls, chain restaurants and gas stations. Literally, it seemed like there was a Waffle House restaurant every three quarters of a mile. In one place there were three within four blocks of each other. Never want to be caught without a waffle, I guess.

I suppose if you live up in the northern part of the state, or Arkansas or Tennessee, it'd seem pretty neat. By Oregon standards it was a letdown. By St Croix standards? Don't make me laugh.

Dirty water in the Gulf.

We made it all the way to Gulfport before we saw any reason to pull off the road – a beach that included a public restroom. They'd done a nice job of giving the beach some amenities, tables and benches. No trees, no dunes, no grasses. A couple of dozen people were on the beach.

We went to the water and it was beyond filthy. Black leaves and debris washed up on shore. Standing ankle deep in the cold water – not Oregon cold, but cold – you literally could not see your toes. And the feel of the water was sludgy. We wanted a shower.

We used the facilities and drove on, through Biloxi, which is full of casinos, and found ourselves in Ocean Springs. The water wasn't any better, but it was a little nicer. My favorite part was the Ocean Springs Yacht Club. The name was probably not meant to be ironic, but there was nothing there but a bunch of day sailors, 20 feet or so. And a bar.

Statue of Iberville, who established
the French settlement at what it now
Ocean Springs, Miss.

But there was a really nice park, on the site of what apparently was the first French settlement established on the Gulf Coast. Really nice playground for kids, old trees. That's where we had our picnic lunch, cold fried chicken and potato salad. We had forgotten to bring forks, but Tori discovered if you bit carefully into a drumstick you could shape it into a sort of spoon, not much but serviceable.

There was also a long pier where you could walk out. There was a guy fishing who'd caught a couple of catfish, and we watched the pelicans diving for their lunch. Even the pelicans suffered in comparison to the islands. On St. Croix the pelicans would fly about 20 feet over the water, then wheel and plunge down to snag a fish. In Mississippi they skimmed the surface, then suddenly dropped to grab something. I guess the water was so cloudy that from more than a few feet they couldn't see the fish.

Tori at Gulfport. Any beach is better than none,
but we've seen much better.

Also saw something I'd never seen before – each pelican was accompanied by a gull or two. When the pelican splashed down and grabbed a fish, the gulls would join him – sometimes actually sitting atop the bigger bird – to steal a bite or two.

Anyway, we finally decided we'd had enough for one day. We could have kept going east and been in Alabama within half an hour. But home was beckoning and we turned our heads west. On the way back we changed across a cool NASA science center at the Mississippi-Louisiana border. It was closed, but it's only an hour away so we'll likely go back for a visit.

The beach was a disappointment, but Tori and I had a great day together, one of the first no hassle fun days we've had since we moved. It was a nice trip. Next time, probably this summer, we'll get on I-10

 Pensacola is only two hours away, we're told, and Fort Walton Beach only about a half hour past that. We're willing to give the Gulf another try. If nothing else, it's a chance for the two of us to get away together.

Turning the Table

It started with the paint.

No, it started with the table, but it was just a table for more than a year. A beat up, chunky, water-stained, worn coffee table. I big, hefty chunk of wood, still a perfectly serviceable coffee table, solid. Heavy. Makes vacuuming the living room a chore. But was it ugly? Oh yes.

I had a picture of it, but managed to delete it recently, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Tori and Millie brought it home one night from a Craig's List curb call. You know, where someone posts on Craig's List "I've got some furniture," or bag of books, or a lava lamp or – seriously, this one was in Sunday morning – a bag of assorted animal bones. They give their address, say they're putting it on the curb, first come, first served. And you're off to the races!

Sounds tacky, I suppose, but it's fun. A come-as-you-are scavenger hunt. A couple of times I was just getting ready for bed around midnight and Tori would say, "We've gotta go! There's a something or other on the curb at ..." and we'd be off. Or the afternoon or morning, whenever. Sometimes you get there just as another person is driving away with it. Sometimes you get there and think, "This is crap. I'm not putting this in my hand, let alone in my car."

But sometimes it's just what you need, whether you knew it or not. And it's an adventure.

One evening Tori and Millie dashed out – so it had to be between August and October 2012, between when we moved into this house and when Millie left for school. When they came back they had, among other things, a coffee table.

Big, heavy, ugly coffee table. Still sturdy, but ugly. For a year it was good enough. It got the job done. In our house, the job for almost any flat horizontal surface is to let me pile paper and books and whatnot on it. And it did that well. There was usually so much stuff on it you couldn't really see how ugly it was.

Then one night not too long ago, Tori gave the table a good look. She started thinking.

This is where the paint comes in. And the comic books.

And since this is long enough, the rest of the story – which is pretty amazing – will be told tomorrow.

A Terrible Tropical Storm

By terrible storm, I mean if this was supposed to be a storm, it did a terrible job of it. We woke up this morning and the sky was blue, the sun streaming down, light breeze and birds chirping. If this is a storm, I'll take more please.

We've been watching the approach of Tropical Storm Karen for several days, with warnings and alerts and predictions of where it would make landfall. It's late in the season, and Louisiana has not been hit by a hurricane after Oct. 1 since 1898, and as the last days of September flicked by, I was feeling better and better. But you have to keep alert. And you can certainly understand why people here would be nervous about a storm starting with the letter K. So when Tropical Storm Karen formed up in the southern Gulf of Mexico, we went on heightened alert.

We checked our supplies, cleaned up a few things in the yard, and waited. At first the predictions were that it would veer east and make landfall somewhere along the Florida panhandle, but as the weekend approached it seemed to be holding steady for the mouth of the Mississippi.

But it was doing some odd things. All the activity seemed to be to the east of the "center" of the storm. A cold front moving across Texas seemed to be pushing dry wind in from the west. All day Saturday Karen seemed to be stalled just south of Grand Isle on the Mississippi delta.

And then about 10 last night, it just disappeared. I've been watching hurricanes with a personal interest since 2008 and I've never seen anything like this. On the TV weather report, the radar showed a big blob, big blob, big blob, and then practically nothing. It just sort of disappeared.

This morning the weather map showed a clear gulf, with just the letter L indicating some lingering low pressure.

All spring we'd been reading predictions about what a difficult hurricane season this was likely to be. All the signs were there for one cataclysm after another. The reality has been very different. Here in Louisiana we've had a couple of systems start to spin up in the gulf, then sort of peter out and turn inland over Mexico or Texas, drop some rain and die. In the Caribbean, there have been a few near misses to the V.I. as storms steamed across the Atlantic, then veered sharply north and died out at sea. I could be mistaken – I know, it's shocking, but I could – but I don't think a single storm has caused any trouble for the U.S. Atlantic coast.

And it's crazy, because ocean surface temperatures are still high, there's plenty of energy out there. I was talking to one weather watcher on St Croix last week who said September was actually warmer than August, and there's still concern that with the high temps the season could linger on into December.

But from where I'm sitting, it seems like an unusually quiet hurricane season is all but in the books. Still, we won't break into our supplies until Dec. 1. Because you never know, except sometimes you do.