Blogs from Long Beach, Mississippi, United States, North America

Its Christmas time, so I am making my holiday visit to friends and relatives in Mississippi and Louisiana. I detoured to visit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. My family and I spent a week here in August - two weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit. Most of the news media has paid too much attention to the plight of New Orleans. The Mississippi Gulf Coast and other areas have been ignored. I was able to drive a ten-mile stretch of what once was Highway 90. This highway is on the water of the gulf. The beach is one step to the south and the homes are one step to the north. Except now the homes are gone. When I look towards where the homes once were it looks like a forest. There are plenty of trees. The leaves ... read more

As I travel, I seek out places that have high-speed internet access at little or no cost. My stay on the Mississippi Gulf Coast led me to search the downtown area of Long Beach, Ms. I found a locally owned and operated coffee shop in what used to be the bank. The photos show that this was a Hancock County Bank Building. Now there is a hair salon upstairs in the back, and a coffee shop downstairs where the bank tellers used to be. This is a wonderful place to sit, drink coffee, and do internet business. The coffee and pastries are good, but the best part is that this feels like a small-town coffee house. It is not a national chain and doesn’t have the slick marketing where everything in the place is an attempt ... read more

We ate a couple of meals at The Cajun Crawfish Hut. This is a small place with indoor and outdoor seating. The food is good. They have a variety of Po-Boys (really good sandwiches served on loaves of French bread) and they specialize in seafood Po-Boys - catfish, oysters, shrimp, and alligator. They also serve good ham and roast beef Po-Boys. These guys serve can’t-close-‘em Po-Boys. This means that you can’t close the French bread around the meat and dressings. I’ve never seen this kind of Po-Boy before. It was a new and enjoyable eating experience. In addition to Po-Boys, they serve dinners of fried seafood as well as boiled shrimp and crawfish. Gumbo is another one of their specialties. We didn’t have any of the gumbo, but I noticed several people ordering it and enjoying ... read more