Day 7 Sheperd State Park Gautier MS
Got up in the morning about 7:30 made coffee and put the heater on. It was cold – about 37 degrees. Checked the dogs and they were both huddled on the electric blanket nice and toasty. The morning was one of drying out after the deluge yesterday and last night. I walked the dogs in the morning and found out the water had subsided a great deal around our site and on the shell rock roads. The walk was cold but relatively dry and peaceful. I ran into a couple from South Dakota who just moved sites because they thought they were going to be washed away - the cold was not an issue for them. Gina made some breakfast with no smoke alarm going off (I took the battery out like Chris suggested) so Remi was not in a state of panic. I did some OT work with Lily and we got ready for our morning walk.
We took the truck to scope out the park and found a huge playing field with a guy throwing a frisbee with his dog. What a great place for remi to run around so we got his ball and out in the field we went. Remi is a ball freak and was in heaven. We noticed some paths going off from the field that turned out to be a an elaborate Frisbee golf course. I found a disc and tried to play a couple holes. Fat chance with Remi - when he gets a hold of a frisbee he treats it like a coconut and trys to shred it. After only one hole I was playing with a frisbee that looked like it had been through the war. We headed back out onto the field and found another frisbee. Remi spotted it first but I beat him to it. He wasn’t go to tear this one up. In fact when we past the guy on the field I learned he was getting ready for a game and was using the field as his driving range. I gave him back the new frisbee, the one Remi didn’t destroy. His foresome had just arrived toking some mary jane on the first tee waiting for him.
The day had warmed up considerable and was glorious. Up to 55 degrees so we decided to take one of the nature paths with the dogs. Shortly into the hike we encountered a wet section and trudged through ultimately realizing we were hiking through a bog. Gina decided to keep on going so deeper and deeper we went and wetter and wetter it got. We finally stumbled across another couple with their dog and we all had a good laugh about this mucky trail. The only one who really loved it? You probably could guess by now that it was Remi – he was in his glory. Rolling around and splashing in the muck. We finally found our way out and came across a dozen archery targets all nestled in the woods. No one was practicing on any of them. I ran down into one and had Gina take my picture at the target. Didn’t get the effect I wanted because you can’t even see me. We got back to the car and Gina decided to walk back because remi had rolled into something realty nasty while on the path and we didn’t want him in the car.
I went into town to fill the truck up with diesel, this is now part of the routine – fill up the truck before moving day without the trailer attached - Much easier. As I drove around I spotted stores like Dirt Cheap, Dollar General, Jerry Lees’ Food Store and Fred’s Super Dollar, these seemed to be about the only stores around. When I got back Gina was finishing up her yoga, sauna and shower and was ready to go check out the sunset. She made us a couple of gin drinks and we started driving around up and down little streets than ran from Graveline Road down to the Gulf. We were told that there were some abandoned lots at the end of a couple of the streets dating back to Hurricane Katrina carnage. While driving around we passed a couple of ladies walking their dogs about 3 times. Finaly one of the ladies asked if we were lost - No just trying to find a sunset spot. She helped us locate an old abandoned place – Point Clear Riviera. It had a no trespassing sign on a fenced gate that was wide open, she said to ignore that- no one will bother you. It looked like it might have been a small development years ago. It still had an active swimming pool on site and one of three docks were walkable, the others were just pilons. We walked to the point, snapped some pics, finished our drinks and headed back.
I had previously set up the the new Cari Chef 2 grill that Billy got us for Christmas and the Outland Firebowl for the night. It was our first time using each and both helped make the night great. The weather was spectacular, we cooked chicken on the grill and gina made a salad. We sat around the fire pit and talked about our reasons for this trip with the neon lights from the trailer turning everything blue. I will write something separately about that later. Gina made a hot toddy and we found that the firebowl was great for keeping them hot in the cooler temps. I updated the blog posts that night and felt like we were starting to get in a rhythm.
An interesting side note – Day 7 is now over and except for some light TV at Charlies we have not turned the TV on yet.