Mississippi Gulf Coast: Biloxi and Gulfport
Mid-Week on the Mississippi Sound: It’s not every day you get to sail a schooner and kiss a dolphin.
Can you remember, as a child, how exciting it was to take a couple of days off school to do something special? When I was a kid, on random winter Wednesdays from time to time, my Dad would suddenly get a wild hair for a midweek ski trip. We would pack the car Tuesday night, then set off at 4 am, headed for a little ski resort about three hours’ drive away, for a day in the snow. Next morning we’d be back to school with a dubious doctor’s note that didn’t quite explain the sunburned cheeks and goggle tan marks. But no-one cared too much, and I’m pretty sure a special day out with a hardworking dad was of more value to everyone involved than the lessons we missed to have it. That’s what I told myself last week when I decided to take my kids, ages seven and eight, out of school so they could come spend a couple of days on the Mississippi Gulf Coast with me, to take a trip on a historic sailing schooner, check out a fancy hotel and a really cool kids’ museum, and to kiss a dolphin (really). And of course, to get some March sun on their cheeks in the process.
Lynn Meadows Discovery Center
As my dad surely recalls from those early morning ski trips, a couple of hours in the backseat of a car is about as much as eight-year-olds can take. So it made sense that our first port of call should be at Gulfport’s Lynn Meadows Discovery Center. Founded by Rose Alman and Carole Lynn Meadows in memory of Carole’s daughter, Lynn, who was killed in a car accident in 1984, the center opened as a children’s museum in 1998 in Gulfport’s stately old Mississippi City Elementary school. First thing you notice, as your penned-up kids burst from the car, is the grounds. They’re beautiful—shaded by the stands of mature oaks that managed to withstand the vicious storm surge Katrina hurled against the site—and prettily landscaped with lawns, curving paths, and lots of installations for kids to explore and clamber over. Inside, Lynn Meadows offers inquiring young minds two floors of cultural, artistic and scientific diversions, ranging from a History Hotel, in which kids can dress up in costume for tea parties and role playing; to a TV station where they can work the cameras, get behind the anchor’s desk, and record themselves reporting the weather. There’s a working model tornado, a mock grocery store, play trains and planes to get behind the controls of, a disability station where children can experience what it’s like to be blind or confined to a wheelchair, and so much more.
Soaring up through both floors is a forty-foot-tall climbing maze for children to scale, and the day we visited the place was fairly buzzing with the happy sounds of creative play. New additions include the adjacent Wings Performing Arts Auditorium, which brings theatrical opportunities to local kids by staging several productions a year; and an impressive kitchen classroom fully outfitted by Mississippi-based Viking Range Corporation, where adult patrons can sign up for cooking classes led by area chefs.
The Blow Fly Inn
Close as it is to the water, Gulfport does not lack places to feed fried seafood to hungry kids. So after a couple of hours at the museum we went in search of some. Five minutes from Lynn Meadows we found it perched high up on stilts over a scenic stretch of Bayou Bernard. The Blow Fly Inn has been doing its thing for forty years, during which time its seafood, steaks, barbecue ribs and sweeping views have made it a favorite among locals and visitors, who arrive by the car- and boat-load year-round. Good, old-fashioned Southern seaside fare ranged from perfectly fried shrimp and catfish and a velvety she-crab bisque, to crabcakes with remoulade sauce, whole broiled flounder, lots of pastas and bone-in ribeye steaks. There’s a great view from the twenty-foot-high balcony, and the kids got a special kick out of the toy plastic blowflies handed out with children’s meals.
Beau Rivage Resort
Anyone who has set foot on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the past couple of years knows the vast amount of progress that has been made towards recovering from Katrina’s shattering blow. But cruising eastwards along Beach Boulevard out of Gulfport, there are still many gaps between the homes and businesses along the beachfront. Each vacant, grassy lot shaded by twisted, hardy live oaks serves as a reminder of the twenty-five-foot storm surge that blasted through here. In Biloxi though, the rebuilding has been much more comprehensive, with enough bright pink-and-green beach bars, crab shacks, jet-ski rental stands and shark-mouth-doored souvenir shops to satisfy the most color-starved Midwestern snowbird refugee.
Presiding over all of it is the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino. Occupying a quarter mile of waterfront and encompassing seventeen hundred rooms, a casino, seven restaurants, an indoor shopping boulevard, private marina, spectacular day spa and that famous, fabulous swimming pool, the Beau Rivage is a world unto itself—a fully-self-contained entertainment metropolis. After warning my overstimulated children not to get accustomed to this level of luxury, we rode the elevators to the twenty-ninth floor to find out what the Beau Rivage is all about. This side of a post-Katrina, four hundred million dollar renovation, the resort is spectacularly opulent. Our two-room suite was huge and equipped with every conceivable amenity—enormous whirlpool tub, multiple televisions, occasional seating areas, entertainment system and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pool and the Mississippi Sound. Like every inch of this enormous resort, the suite was sumptuously provisioned and spotlessly maintained. The walls glowed pink and yellow. Towels and robes were thick and soft. Complimentary bath products were by Modern Apothecary.
My two children’s palates represent opposite ends of the culinary spectrum, so we chose to have dinner at the Terrace Café – one of five casual on-site restaurants (there are also two fine-dining eateries and a variety of stops for quick snacks). The Terrace’s menu didn’t disappoint, delighting one child with a P.B. & J. on bunny bread, the other with grilled salmon in a ginger beurre blanc sauce, and me with Szechuan pork and cashew nut lettuce-leaf wraps. For obvious reasons we did not venture into the Beau Rivage’s cavernous casino section this time, but between the pool and the ice cream bar and games arcade and so on, there were more than enough alternative activities to keep the family clientele occupied for days at a time.
The Biloxi Schooner & Maritime Museum
Or there would have been, had there not been two more area attractions the kids and I had a duty to explore. The first was an early evening cruise on the Glenn L. Swetman, a faithful replica of the iconic Biloxi Schooner Sailing Ships, owned and operated by the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum. Recently returned to service after a deck-off restoration, the Glenn L. Swetman offers two-and-a-half-hour walk-on cruises that leave from Biloxi’s Schooner Pier complex daily, and several times a day in peak season. Ably assisted by a crew of two, Captain Ron Reiter welcomed about fifteen walk-up passengers onboard at 4 pm, and delivered a pleasantly short list of do’s and don’ts before starting the ship’s motor just long enough to push us away from the dock and out into the channel. Then, on a calm sea and wreathed in late afternoon mist, Captain Ron killed the engine, his crew hoisted the Swetman’s sails aloft, and the throb of the diesel was replaced by the creak of rigging and the languid rush of water along the hull. Passengers relaxed; coolers opened; bottles of wine were brought forth; and folks stretched out on benches and hatch covers to soak up the spring sun.
This was a sublime way to spend a couple of hours. The wind picked up as evening approached, urging the Swetman forward with effortless grace and dispelling the mist to reveal sparkling views out to Deer Island. Captain Ron, a retired ship’s captain who peformed much of the restoration work on this ship himself, shared snatches of local seafaring history while coaching the kids aboard as they took turns at the helm. “There used to be hundreds of them working this coast,” he remarked. “They were called Biloxi Schooners because this was the area’s hub for shrimping and oystering.” Captain Reiter explained that the Glenn L. Swetman and the museum’s other ship, the Mike Sekull, were reproductions built as close to the original oyster schooners as the coast guard would allow and still license them to take passengers. The originals would have had an open hold in place of the foredeck cabin, which would be filled to the gunwales with shrimp or oysters before returning to port.
Towards sunset the wind quit so Captain Ron furled the sails, started the Swetman’s diesel, and motored us down the channel past the Beau Rivage, and back into the twenty-first century. A two-and-a-half hour cruise costs $30 for adults, $15 for children, and is a valuable source of revenue for the Maritime Museum, which lost its building to Katrina and is currently close to breaking ground on a replacement. The schooners can accommodate parties of up to forty-nine, and private charters for weddings, parties and other events can be arranged.
The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies
The next morning we had perhaps the most exciting attraction of all left to visit. Back up the coast in Gulfport, hidden away at the end of a laneway on the banks of the Intracoastal Waterway, the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies is an educational and research facility that exists to study, protect and preserve the whales and turtles of the Gulf of Mexico. Surrounded by a learning center, pools, research labs and more, IMMS staff rescue stranded whales, dolphins and turtles; rehabilitate sick and injured animals; conduct research to support habitat preservation; and offer wetlands tours, summer camps and educational programs to help the public become better stewards of the environment. For all these reasons it is a hugely worthwhile place to visit. But there are two more reasons that are absolutely the stars of the show. They are Bo and Buster—a pair of Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins and the center of IMMS’s Dolphin Encounter and Interaction programs.
I don’t care what age you are: the experience of having a four-hundred-pound dolphin pop up beside you, take a fish from your hand, then roll on her back to have her tummy tickled is an unforgettable one. This is what a Dolphin Encounter program offers. After a thirty-minute introductory session and tour during which staff member Heather Little shared information about marine mammals in general and dolphins in particular, the kids joined a trainer to kneel at the pool’s edge with a bucket of fish and a whistle. At first blast, Bo—a thirty-four-year-old ex-Navy (!) dolphin—popped up joyously alongside the dock, to meet her young visitors. With a gentleness that belied her considerable size, Bo daintily accepted a herring or two, responded cheerily to the trainer’s hand signals, lazed on her back while her tummy was stroked, and opened her mouth wide so the kids could see, and even touch, her enormous teeth. Finally, under the trainer’s watchful eye, Bo rose up and gently placed her smooth head on each child’s outstretched palms, for a kiss (and a photograph, of course). The experience, which left the children simply giddy with joy, is enough to take your breath away, and imparts not just an awe for this truly magnificent creature, but also a lasting awareness about some of the issues impacting their wellbeing in the wild. As Institute Vice President Samia Ahmad explained, “Our educational efforts inform the public, so people can understand that what they do affects the environment; and what happens in the environment affects us. If you discover you love something you’ll want to protect it. If the public has a greater appreciation, they become better stewards of their environment.” After an hour in the company of Bo and Buster, it’s impossible to want anything less.
Back to the Beach
With the sun still high in the sky and half an afternoon to kill, the kids and I had any number of other activities we could still have squeezed in before heading home. But we were at the beach, after all, and our schedule to date hadn’t left much time for it. So we passed on the shrimp boat excursion and the mini golf, picked a pretty stretch of sand, and just went for a good, old-fashioned swim. And we forgot the sunscreen; so when the kids got back to school they were looking a little on the sunburned side. But that’s OK. It’s not every day you get to sail a schooner and kiss a dolphin. Some things are worth skipping school for.
Details.Details.Details.
Lynn Meadows Discovery Center 246 Dolan Avenue, Gulfport (228) 897-6039 • lmdc.org Blow Fly Inn 1201 Washington Avenue, Gulfport (228) 896-9812 • blowflyinn.com Beau Rivage Resort & Casino 875 Beach Boulevard, Biloxi (228) 386-7111 • beaurivage.com Biloxi Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum (228) 435-6320 • maritimemuseum.org Institute for Marine Mammal Studies 10801 Dolphin Lane, Gulfport (228) 896-9182 • imms.org