Day 3 - Hits and Misses

They can't all be winners. Someone has to be the loser. Someone has to be the worst player in the NBA. And not all stops on my tour are winners, or even exist. Despite some misses during the day, it was a return to form. Today was back to being the kind of trip I wanted and not the single-minded trek to get to Pensacola that yesterday was.

I started the day with a return trip to the Gulf Islands National Seashore after being shown it in brief by Oscar the night before. I spent about 2 hours driving up and down the beautiful and at times evil looking coast. The waters are a startling emerald green and the sand a near snow white (I'm told before the recent hurricanes stirring it up that it was beyond white) seems like paradise, and when the breeze blows it feels like it too. Then you see stray and jagged dunes jutting up from long expanses of flat sands and long strips of dead, petrifying trees making it looks like a graveyard of nature. This is all the result of the shore being ravaged by one hurricane after another, to the point that they stopped reopening the park until they were sure the upturn of storms was over. The shore is home to several beaches, the remains of various military installations such as Fort Pickens, and a handful of campgrounds. I was also treated to a show by the Blue Angels as they were practicing flying in formation.

I could have spent the entire day along the shore there, but I finally got hot and sweaty enough on a rare day in which the breeze just wasn't blowing and decided to move on. It wasn't far to the first stop of the day - the Derailed Diner in Robertsdale, Alabama - which was good because walking along the beach and up and down the fort had made me rather hungry. Getting there was a little harder than it should've been. This was mostly because the GPS insisted on sending me down a road that not only didn't exist, but where this road was supposed to be there was a house that looked like it had been there since before roads existed. I decided to take off the training wheels and turn off the GPS and figure it out myself. The gimmick with Derailed Diner is that a fictional train derailed, plowing through an existing diner, but instead of giving up the ghost they went on as if nothing had happened. On the outside this plays off really well...except for the fact that it's tacked on to the back of an ultra-mega travel center (the kind with showers, laundromat, and so on). The theme pretty much falls apart as soon as you walk in. Instead of walking into a wasteland of food and train they decorated with a very generic transportation theme. It's nice looking, but bicycles on the wall, a giant cut-out school bus hiding the kitchen, and seats at the bar replaced with those from trackers, motorcycles, and even a horse saddle. However, it quickly and completely broke the illusion.

Luckily the food was actually quite good. I didn't go with any of the standard diner fare that was available on the menu, but went with a hobo meal. I used to make hobo meals in Boy Scouts, and they were a highlight of the camping cuisine. They're incredibly simple, but take a great deal of time. A hobo meals is a variety of diced up vegetables, a meat of choice, and usually whole potato all wrapped up in aluminum foil and cooked. On a camp fire it can take close to an hour to full cook the potato and get the meat and other veggies to the point where they completely fall apart. In the end you have a what basically boils down to a very hearty stew. The hobo meal at Derailed Diner was spot on with what I remembered and loved from Boy Scouts. I also indulged in a piece of Pecan Pie Cheesecake, which was a perfect blend of the two that resulted in an unbelievably rich and tasty dessert. And odd little fact I learned from talking to the staff - a whole Pecan Pie Cheesecake weighs in at a staggering 44 pounds.

My next stop was literally just down the road from Derailed Diner, and one I was rather looking forward to - Styx River Water World. It's no surprise that this former water park failed, being that it's off the interstate in the middle of no-fucking-where Alabama. The story was that although this park had been closed for nearly 10 years, the remains were clearly visible and easily accessible. Remains such as giant statues and the remnants of old rides. What I found was a terrifying wasteland overgrown by vines sitting on the edge of a run down RV park. There was little evidence of the park visible from the gnarly rusted fence, but there were just enough hints of bleached plastic fountains and kudzu covered suggestions of more laying just out of site. I was so tempted to hop the fence and explore the amusement park graveyard, but it seemed more like the start of a horror movie than a vacation. Had I not been alone, I still might have done it.

After giving up on the water park I decided to head on to Pascagoula, MS. It wasn't a stop I had planned in advance, but after seeing it on the map I had to see it for myself. Pascagoula is famous, at least me, because of the Ray Stevens song "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" in which a squirrel wreaks havoc on the congregation of a Pascagoula church. The song brings up images of a Mayberry-like small town. Well, a lot has happened since that song and Pascagoula is a fair sized city centered around the Northrop Grummon shipbuilding yard where today's biggest Navy ships are constructed. I drove on without even slowing down; Pascagoula had nothing for me. I then ended up smack in the middle of Mobile, AL after trying to avoid an odd hour and a half detour around Mobile Bay the GPS insisted I follow. There's really no nice way to put it, but Mobile is a shithole. I came in by way of Chickasaw and was shocked at how run-down and ruined a place it was. It looked like the parts of Cuba or Jamaica that documentaries show you to hit home the fact that they are poor, destitute countries and not the tropical paradises that Cruise Lines and Fidel Castro want you to think. The roads were faded out to the point that lanes were more of a suggestion than anything else and I think locals shifted in and out of them more out of memory than by sight. But then quite suddenly, and for only a handful of blocks, I was thrust into an oak-lined lane with neighborhood schools, picturesque little churches, small town drug stores and grocers, and then I was assaulted by 10 miles of fast food and chain restaurants.

The day ended on one last disappointment, but it was due entirely to bad timing, and it will be remedied in the morning. I found myself in D'Iberville at about the time I was getting hungry and I got excited when I realized the next stop, only a few miles away, was the first tamale restaurant on my mini Tamale Trail tour. Unfortunately Doris' Hot Tamales was closed, with a sign on the window telling would be tamale tasters that not only were they close but that one should come by early because she runs out quick. So it looks like I might be having tamales for breakfast. Only tomorrow will tell.