Spring Break 2014: Biloxi

If you remember my post from yesterday, you'll remember how I went to New Orleans and took a lot of pictures, and came away with some cool memories. Today, I'm going to talk about our little mini-trip in Biloxi, Mississippi, where we stayed at the military base so that we could be within an hour of New Orleans. That way, we didn't have to pay the ridiculous hotel rates around New Orleans! And we would be extra-safe on base, and the on-base lodging is actually really comfortable! (It's a suite: mini-kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms [one master, one with two twin beds], and a living room area all for $60 a night!)

The first day in Biloxi, we were told by friends that we had to try this chicken place called "Raising Cane's." It's just like Zaxby's, only better! Since we love Zaxby's, we decided to try it. It was...meh. The chicken had no spice to it, and the secret Cane's Sauce was bland. It was a meal I could've gotten for much better at my parents' house. But hey - we tried it, so we can talk smack about it, right?

We also went to the BX (the Base Exchange - it seemed much bigger than the PX's I'm used to!) and looked at clothes and shoes and makeup and all sorts of other tax-free goodies. (I love shopping on-base.) I ended up getting a thing of Maybelline BB Cream (that stuff is awesome!) and a new magazine. I found that the BX was also selling Lucky Brand jeans - the very thing that my boyfriend swears by - for about 40% less than the retail Lucky Brand store at the Summit Mall sells them for. I guess that's one perk of being in the military - cheaper-than-retail sales! (Plus, it's tax-free.)

We got into Biloxi on Sunday afternoon, and spent the rest of Sunday relaxing in the hotel room and running around base. On Monday, we left on the short just-over-an-hour trip to New Orleans, and spent the day running around that city. We came back to our hotel room at the end of the day, exhausted, and planning out what to do on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, we ended up going to the Jefferson Davis Home that is in Biloxi: Beauvoir. The outbuildings and the outside of the house were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, but the porches have been rebuilt and the little houses reconstructed all according to detail and to scale. Even Varina's rose garden (Davis's wife) has been reconstructed to scale. It'll probably be beautiful in about five years or so.

 To the left, you'll see Jefferson Davis's bedroom. See the little metal tub in the middle of the picture? Somehow, the six-foot-plus man folded himself up in there to take a bath. I can't even imagine that. Of course, Davis's wife slept in the bedroom next to his, because men and women didn't sleep in the same room because men had to sleep sitting up or something along those lines.

 This is the view from the front porch of Beauvoir. Did you know that the beach wasn't there when the house was built? It was added in the 1950s! After they built the sea wall, the extra sand was sucked up and put into a beach on the edge of the water, according to our tour guide. That's something I can't even begin to imagine! Just...wow!

 After the tour, we were free to wander about the property, so we went and visited the cemetery. I enjoy looking at old graves (is that really morbid?), and there are supposedly something like 790 or so on the property. The gravestones are all so small. Some are bigger than others, some are cracked, some are faded, and some are missing "death dates." Some are just blank.

Some have even become embedded in the trees that have grown up in the graveyard, like the one that you see to the right. There were several that were near trees, but this is the only one that was actually in a tree.

I've been to a lot of military cemeteries, but I don't think I've been to one that seems so...lonely. It's alone. Almost would be abandoned in the middle of the city, if it wasn't for Beauvoir.

After we visited the cemetery, we went up and viewed the library, and my dad talked to someone there about his great-great grandfather, Josiah Roland, who fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. Then we swung through the gift shop, and I bought a little "Confederate States of America" pin. I'll probably put it on one of my denim jackets somewhere. I wanted a confederate flag (the Beauregard Battle Flag, to be exact, not to be confused with the Stars & Bars), but they didn't have one in the size I wanted in a price that I could afford. It's okay, though. I'll get my confederate flag some day. (And best of all, my boyfriend's perfectly okay with me getting one! That's why he's a keeper.)

I know that some people who are reading this are probably thinking, "Why would such a smart and educated young college girl want a confederate flag? They were traitors!"

Well, it's part of my heritage. I had a great-great-great grandfather who fought for the Confederates. We have a Civil War cannonball sitting in our house. (I'll have to get a picture of it later - I'm not sure where it is at the moment!) We always sit on the Southern side when we go to the Dixie Stampede. I'm not ashamed of my past. We shouldn't be ashamed of our heritage. It makes us who we are. I don't know if any of my ancestors owned slaves, but if they had, that doesn't make it right. Slavery was wrong. I'm not one of those "The South was Right" people, but I do think that, in a way, they were justified for what they did. The South thought they were wronged, and they attempted to fix it. They just did it in a rather bad way.

Not everyone who flies a Confederate flag is a redneck, yankee-hating hick. Just remember that.