Packed up and looked outside our room to see it was quite a nice motel (Best Western) with a pool, spa , tennis court and kiddie pool. We could have spent more time here, but we hit the road, headed for Destin in Florida. We drove straight across Louisiana, but detoured off the interstate near Biloxi Mississippi to see the coast. We had been curious about the hurricane Katrina aftermath but were mostly concerned with seeing the coast for purely scenic reasons.

We saw signs of destruction - billboards and lampposts ripped up, lots of trash on the road - but we were unprepared for what we saw along the waterfront esplanade in Biloxi. The buildings on either side, and for probably a hundred or two hundred yards back, look (if they are still standing) like the hurricane might have come through last week. I suppose lots of debris must have been removed, but it appears that’s still the main focus of operations there. There’s not much sign of rebuilding, and lots of ‘for sale by owner’ signs. The storm surge must have done the damage, as the upper floors of most multi story buildings are intact, with just the ground floor ripped out - some look like they were built on posts. Maybe they should rebuild them that way. We naively thought we could continue past Biloxi and head back to the I-10, but found the bridge off across the bay was also demolished by Katrina (again, no clean up is done - torn up sections of road tilt up into the air). We had to head back west to get to the interstate, so the whole detour cost us a lot more time than we anticipated.

We arrived at the Sheraton at Ft Walton about 5pm, unloaded quickly, then headed straight for the pool. Ava was thrilled. Then supper outside at ‘Crab Trap’, which is on a boardwalk along the beach. The kids got buckets and shovels with their meals, so we hit the beach afterwards, though it was dark. Ava and Jed were thrilled again, though Jed was fairly cautious at first. We Stayed long enough to discover the sand was beautiful and perfect for building sand castles, then called it a night.