Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: Photos: Trip to Florida, Day 9 -- from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to Mena, Arkansas

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Photos: Trip to Florida, Day 9 -- from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to Mena, Arkansas

Today we drove from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to Mena, Arkansas.

Last night when we pulled into the parking lot here at the Hilton Gardens Inn in Pascagoula, Mississippi, we noticed this fountain -- the bottom bowl and the water was illuminated with colored lights. We were surprised to see by the light of day that there are actually three bowls in graduated sizes, with water spilling over the edges of each bowl into the pool at the base.

Biloxi, Mississippi

No idea what this is. A UFO landed, maybe?

Could be a Tourist Center, I suppose.

Biloxi Yacht Club

Biloxi Harbor Fuel & Bait

Vintage bus called the 'Casino Hopper'

Sign hanging on the rope says 'WET PAINT'.

Everywhere we went, from Day 1 until now, it seems to have been Trash Day in every single town and city. :-D

Hancock Bank

MGM Park

Beau Rivage Resort & Casino

Samson impersonator, maybe, going away with the gates of Gaza? There was no visible construction nearby. Maybe he was just going home from Home Depot.

IP Casino Resort Spa & Costa Cucina Italian Restaurant

(The 'Costa' is doubtless the key word in the previous sentence.)

Just look at that enormous parking garage.

I wonder what's at the end of Lickskillet Road?

Tchoutacabouffa River

Biloxi, Mississippi

Lake Pontchartrain

Frank Davis 'Naturally N'Awlins' Memorial Bridge

Drawbridge is up -- see the boat that just came through?

I wanted to cross Lake Pontchartrain on the Causeway, which is almost 24 miles across; but we missed the turn and only crossed the east side of the Lake on the Interstate 10 bridge, which is called the Twin Span. The Twin Span Bridge is about 6 miles long.

Apartment building ruined by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They don't rebuild the apartment complex... but they build plenty of gargantuan new casinos! Good grief.

New Orleans skyline

University of New Orleans Technology Enterprise Center

Huge parking garage for the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Mercedes-Benz Superdome

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The following pictures of the Metairie Cemetery are not mine; I got them on Google Images. I took photos as we drove by, with various parts of the cemetery on either side of the Interstate, but none were good. If the overpass banisters weren't in the way, the pictures were blurry. But we could clearly see it wasn't any run-of-the-mill cemetery.

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Tornado-damaged trees

Damage from a tornado that struck 7 days earlier, on February 23, 2016. Two people were killed and 30 injured in an RV park in nearby Convent, Louisiana. One other person was killed by a tornado the same night in Lamar County, Mississippi, which is west and southwest of Hattiesburg.

Somebody's vacation has been rudely interrupted.

Bridge over the Mississippi River

18.2-mile-long Atchafalaya Basin Bridge

The Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the United States, with an area of about 1,400,000 acres -- 20 miles in width from east to west, and 150 miles in length.

The Atchafalaya Basin can be divided into three areas: the northern part, composed of bottomland hardwood forest; the middle, made up of cypress-willow-tupelo swamps; and the lower, which contains freshwater and brackish marsh. The Atchafalaya Basin is a refuge for such species as the Peregrine Falcon, the Florida Panther, Bachman’s Warbler, and the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. About 100 species of fish, crawfish, shrimp, and crabs live in the swamp's waters. Other animals that call the Atchafalaya home are the Louisiana black bear, whitetail deer, bobcat, coyote, alligator, beaver, nutria (also known as 'river rats' -- webfooted rodents that are more agile in the water than on land), mink, otter, muskrat, armadillo, fox, and opossum. Overall, the Atchafalaya Basin is home to nine Federal and State listed endangered/threatened wildlife species, six endangered/threatened bird species, twenty-nine rookeries, greater than forty mammalian species, over forty reptile species, and more than twenty amphibian species. The Atchafalaya is considered the most productive swamp in the world and is one of the most productive lands in the Northern Hemisphere. Until the fur industry collapsed, Louisiana was the number one producer of fur in North America.