The Vicksburg Trip -- Day 3

This morning we had breakfast in the hotel and then headed south 25 miles to visit the small town of Port Gibson. Downtown the storefronts and shop signs all looked very old and well-aged. There's a traditional Greek-revival style grand old courthouse with a stone soldier in front. You can see more photos in the slide show I posted yesterday.

The town is also noted for the First Presbyterian Church with the finger pointing to the sky -- 12 feet from wrist to finger tip. Also worth a look is Windsor Ruins -- a mansion that survived the Civil War but burned down in 1890. Only the massive columns still stand.


Click on image to enlarge

We entered the Natchez Trace Parkway in Port Gibson and drove along the 25 mile long segment that leads to the back road to Vicksburg. It was peaceful and lovely. Someday we want to drive the whole length of the Parkway from Natchez to Nashville, 444 miles.

Here are some links for more information about the Natchez Trace.

• U.S. Park Service Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail Site
• U.S. Park Service Natchez Trace Parkway Site
• Natchez Trace Wiki
• Away.com's Natchez Trace Parkway Travel Guide

We were delighted with our visit to Port Gibson and the drive along the Natchez Trace.

Back in Vicksburg we decided to have lunch at a place we had been reading about in the tourist guides -- Walnut Hills Round Table Restaurant. You sit at big round tables and the food is piled up on a lazy Susan in the middle. You sit with strangers and share the huge meal boarding house style. The web site says that during the meal we were to expect regular visits from the owner, chief cook, waitress, waiter and other staff members making sure that your meal is "just right". Yeah, sure.

The slogan is "World Famous Southern Plantation Cuisine." We found it was over-priced dull food with grudging service. Let's just say, we weren't charmed.

After some afternoon nap time we ventured out to visit another riverboat casino. This time it was the Rainbow Casino and it was bright and lively. Vicksburg is situated on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi. To get to this casino and several of the others you must drive down very steep access roads to the river bank. It's very steep and very dramatic with the view of the river and the bright lights of the casinos.

The Vicksburg Trip -- Day 2

We slept late and left the Cabot Lodge, our hotel in Ridgeland, shortly before noon to set off on the 40 mile trip to Vicksburg. But first, because we had lots of time, we drove around Jackson to see the sights. Pictured above is the Eudora Welty House.


Click on image to enlarge

Operated by the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark. It was her home for all her 76 years and she wrote all of her books there. Jack attended her writing classes at Millsaps and visited her at home.

In Vicksburg we drove through town and enjoyed seeing the the old, and restored, down town and the old court house, built and re-built throughout the mid to late 19th century. It is now a museum. Across the street from the old court house is the new courthouse completed in 1940. It is a gem of art deco architecture. We loved the lighting fixtures beside the front steps. There's an example on the left.


Vicksburg Bridges over the Mississippi River


We had dinner at Rusty's Riverfront Grill. The food was good -- spicy and very Cajun-style for this side of the river. We had blackened chicken, spicy grilled shrimp, cheese grits and fabulous crisp-fried onion rings. Desserts looked good but there was no possibility of finding room for another bite.

On our way back to the Holiday Inn Express we stopped for a few minutes at one of Vicksburg's five riverboat casinos -- DiamondJacks. Not much luck there. And the decor wasn't very festive. The previous owner apparently went for a cave look (a Flintstone's Casino, perhaps?). Most of it was dim and grim.

Alabama's New Casino Opens Nearby

Alabama's Newest Casino

It's also Alabama's first casino resort..

The beautiful Wind Creek Casino and its four restaurants opened last week. The hotel opens next week. The main floor with the casino and restaurants is nicely designed with a feeling of open space. The photos on the web site show some beautiful hotel rooms, too.

But the Wind Creek is the only game in town. And to say it's in the middle of nowhere makes it seem more urban than it really is. The hotel tower looms above the flat cotton fields of Atmore, Alabama. It is right off Interstate 65 and you can't miss it -- the tallest building between Mobile and Montgomery.

Driving distances from both Mobile and Pensacola are about 50 to 55 miles. From Mobile it's an easy, fast Interstate Highway drive all the way. From Pensacola much of the drive is on country roads and when the sign says 35 MPH you better slow down.

The slots look like Vegas-style machines but they are really bingo machines. Through the magic of the computer they can mock the look and feel of real video slots but payoffs are determined by a casino-wide bingo game for each pull. There are no table games or video poker. And it's a good bet that there are more people in the Alabama state legislature who want the place shut down than will vote to let them have a fully functioning Las Vegas- or Biloxi-style casino.

The food is quite good. The buffet's well-stocked and cheap. Right now, Monday through Thursday, if you buy one buffet meal you get one free. At lunch time that means for $7.95 plus tax -- about $8.60 total -- two people get all-you-can-eat meals. Lunch plus a tip for the disappearing waitress means the two of you are out of there for $10 and some change. Two dollars more if you valet park.

Will the lure of real slot machines, video poker and table games tempt people to travel the extra distance to Biloxi? Compared to the drive to Atmore, Biloxi is just an extra hour of driving from Pensacola and only about 15 minutes more than Atmore from Mobile. That's not a lot of additional drive time for a lot more variety in gaming, dining, lodging and entertainment.

A Quick Roadtrip to Biloxi and the Circus

Usually we wouldn't have gone away when a major storm was heading for Pensacola, but Tropical Storm Fay was moving so slowly we decided we could drive to Biloxi for just one night. We headed over on Thursday morning.

We were off to see Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey's one-ring circus -- Boom A Ring.

We stopped for lunch at a favorite restaurant, the locally-owned Felix's Fish Camp Grill in Spanish Fort, Alabama. It is on the bay across from Mobile with great views of battleships at Battleship Park.

Felix's looks like a fish camp -- old, battered, falling down -- but inside it is a fine restaurant with excellent service and wonderful food. Have the crab soup, it's worth the trip.

From Felix's we continued on to Biloxi and checked in at the Isle of Capri Casino. We hadn't stayed there for a couple of years and we were pleased to find the rooms had been nicely refurbished.



Early in the evening we drove west along the beach road to the circus. It was playing at Biloxi's Mississippi Coast Coliseum.

The show had some very good acts and lots of classic circus elements such as juggling, tumbling and acrobatics. The dog act was unique with its cast of five trained Daschunds. Los Scolas' high wire act was as exciting as ever and this year they added a high energy double wheel as well. Opening the second act was Vicenta Pages presenting her white tigers immediately followed by her aerial act.

In the morning we drove home to wait for Tropical Storm Fay and by Sunday evening it still had not arrived in Pensacola.

Good Food at Emeril's in Gulfport, Mississippi

Last month, the Grand Biloxi Casino, Hotel & Spa, part of the Harrah's group, offered us some free nights at their very flashy hotel on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. So, a couple weeks ago we decided to spend a night there.

We drove over early in the day and stopped for lunch, just west of Biloxi, at Emeril's Gulf Coast Fish House, in Gulfport.

As we expected when dining at an Emeril Lagasse restaurant, the food, service, ambience and location was the very best, plus the view of the Gulf of Mexico from our table was splendid. And the prices were quite reasonable. The restaurant is in Gulfport's only gaming establishment -- the classy Island View Casino Resort. It was a wonderful experience and we must go back for another meal there. Soon.

Click [BAM], for the links to all of Emeril's restaurants -- ten so far, in four states.

After lunch we proceeded to our hotel, the Grand Biloxi. We got a great room with a view of the Gulf and the huge construction site of Harrah's upcoming tribute to Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville Casino & Resort, due to open in 2010.

Our Memphis Trip, Day 4, Wednesday

The weather this morning had improved. Still misty and rainy, but the wind had died down and it seemed warmer. We still had the rental car so after breakfast at the hotel we set out to see a bit of Memphis.

We headed for Graceland. The ads all say "Elvis Presley's Graceland." It is down the way from "Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel." We saw Graceland. That's what we tell people. Actually we saw it as we drove past. The rain had returned and we were in no mood to stand around in it waiting for a tram to take us from the parking lot to the mansion.

We drove south to Mississippi and the casinos in Tunica. We expected a strip of casinos, just like the Las Vegas Strip. But the eleven casino hotels are far apart, miles and miles apart. And we never did see the Mississippi River.

The designers of Tunica seem to have learned nothing from the newly created town of Laughlin, Nevada, where a cluster of casinos creates a community of attractions along the Colorado River, all within walking distance from each other, or a quick trolley ride, or a delightful boat ride -- free except for a tip to the driver. Laughlin is charming; Tunica is Spaceport Mars.

After a dull and very ordinary lunch at the Goldstrike Casino we headed back to Memphis to drop off the car and return to the hotel. On the wet trip back from the car rental place we did get to see the neon lights of Beale Street glistening in the late afternoon rain. Very pretty.

It was too wet out to go see the ducks at The Peabody.

Dinner was delivery sandwiches and shrimp bisque from Westy's in our cozy room. And early to bed with a 6:50 am train to catch.

Road Hazards

A couple of Tuesdays ago we decided to spend the night at the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi. The Beau Rivage is a beautiful place, perhaps the fanciest hotel in the whole state of Mississippi and it's officially the tallest building in the state.

Constructed in 1999 by Mirage Resorts, then owned by Las Vegas' Steve Wynn, it was soon was acquired by MGM through the merger of MGM Grand Inc. and Mirage Resorts, Inc. in 2000.

All of Biloxi's beach resorts, and most of the city, were badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina. All of the casinos were destroyed and the hotels unusable. The Beau Rivage re-opened in August 2006, exactly one year after Katrina.

We decided to go over and spend the night to help support the revived tourist economy. Also the Beau Rivage Casino had offered us a free room for the night in their luxury hotel.

"Why don't we drive over early and go to New Orleans for lunch?"

So we called ahead and made a reservation at the justifiably famous Commander's Palace on the corner of Washington Avenue and Coliseum Street in the Garden District.

I should have read my horoscope it must have warned that it was a bad day for travel. On the way over the traffic was terrible. It was congested and erratic, wildly fast and then slow.

In Mississippi we found ourselves at the end of a long line of cars and trucks. There was a wide load ahead. The widest wide load ever. It was the roof for a pre-fab house and it was fully two lanes wide. The pilot truck was making the oversize truck drive in the ditch long enough for one vehicle to pass by, then the wide load would resume driving down the middle of the two-lane highway. At last we got around it. Very scary.

Then as we entered New Orleans' French Quarter, nearly at the restaurant, all five inbound lanes stopped and we sat -- moving ahead one car length at a time. -- for about 20 minutes. There had been a multi-car accident ahead of us and it took a while to clear the road. When we got going again we got to the restaurant too early and spent about 30 minutes driving around the narrow streets of the scenic Garden District looking at the old homes. Very Anne Rice.

At Commander's Palace, quietly in command of the reception desk was the very recognizable Ti Martin, daughter of Ella Brennan. We arrived at 1:00 P.M. and the dining room was nearly full of happy customers and lots of very attentive staff. Great food and great service. Jack had their famous turtle soup, I had their gumbo. For the main course Jack had a grilled filet salad and I also had a salad, mine topped with crisp fried oysters. For dessert we had their signature bread pudding.

By the time we left it was really getting hot and humid. The temperature was 95 degrees and the heat index was 115. After a long wait for the valet parking guy he came running back to say the car won't start. Dead battery.

Of course -- a half-hour stuck in the traffic jam and another slowly driving around the Garden District looking at the old houses -- keeping the air conditioner on for so long at slow speed had drained the battery. The people at Commander's Palace were very helpful. We called the Auto Club but they were very slow so some gardeners spotted us waiting in the hot sun and gave us a jump start.

By 3:30 we were on our way out of town and got to the hotel and a beautiful room about 5:00 p.m.

News from Our Mississippi Neighbors

Jackson County United for Families meeting with Coast Businesses for Fair Play

Who comes up with the names of these special interest groups? What do they want?

One is a group of Mississippi pastors who say it stands for "quality of life and moral values." The other is largely supported by Biloxi casinos and is against the Indian casino's tax-free privledges and potential freedom of location.

The proposed casino to be operated by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians would be closer to Interstate 10 and away from the waterfront locations state law forces upon the non-Indian casinos.

This would take business away from the Biloxi casinos and harm families?

The group of pastors opposed to gambling met Monday with a representative of Coast Businesses for Fair Play to discuss strategies against the proposed Choctaw casino near Ocean Springs.

The pastors plan to ask the Jackson County Board of Supervisors to hold a nonbinding referendum to oppose the casino, or at least a casino operated by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians away from the water.

What good is a nonbinding referendum, anyway? Does it cost the taxpayers anything? Probably. Does the casino cost the taxpayers anything? No, it brings in millions from the casino customers.

For more on this read the story by Tom Wilemon in the Biloxi (Mississippi) Sun Herald, January 24, 2007.

Beau Rivage Resort & Casino, Biloxi

It was a dark and stormy day...the perfect time to drive over to Mississippi and spend the night at MGM Mirage's Beau Rivage. We haven't been it in since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. It reopened last summer on August 29, 2006 -- the one-year anniversary of Katrina.

The hotel is as beautiful as ever and the guest room alone is worth the trip. The public areas are lavish with marble walls, mosaic floors and fresh flowering plants everywhere.

It's a world-class resort at prices that wouldn't get you a low class motel room in New York or London. The casino is big and flashy and we were surprised to find it full of people on an off-season Tuesday night. No other hotel/casino on the Gulf Coast can compare to the Beau Rivage. Very few anywhere else can either.

For casual but hearty food at the Beau Rivage we loved the Memphis Q for steaks and BBQ. Excellent food and a wonderful setting -- a dark cave deep inside the casino.

Off We Go to Biloxi

We took a quick overnight trip to the Biloxi casinos. The Isle of Capri Hotel & Casino's IsleOne member card (which is also your room key) has a cheery logo but the experience this time was not completely cheery for the customers. And quality control on the hotel side seems to be slipping a bit. I think we have stayed there once too often.

Up the street at Harrah's Grand Casino Biloxi the staff was friendly and went out of their way to make their guests feel welcome. Hooray for Harrah's. We enjoyed their wonderful breakfast buffet.

Road Trip -- Mississippi Gulf Coast Casinos

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast last summer, all of the casinos and hotels were out of business -- either seriously damaged or completely destroyed. The rebuilding is still under way but many of the resorts have reopened. And more will reopen soon, including the sad case of the Hard Rock Casino. Its grand opening was scheduled for the day after Katrina destroyed it

Recently we went for a visit to check out the casinos and to give them a chance to get some of our money. In many cases the hotels suffered less damage than the casinos did. The casino games have been moved into what used to be hotel lobbies and ballrooms while the fancy new (or rebuilt) casinos are going up. There's lots of construction underway everywhere.

Most of the reopened properties are in the city of Biloxi -- seven so far -- with two more in nearby Gulfport and Bay St. Louis. And more to come in Waveland and D'Iberville.

We visited, played some slots and video poker and left plenty of money at the Palace, the IP (formerly the Imperial Palace Casino), the Grand Biloxi and the Isle of Capri. The bottom of the photo of the casino sign (above) is hard to read but in keeping with the tropical, Caribbean island theme at the Isle of Capri their current slot promotion is 'Jamaican Me Rich.'

The Isle of Capri has come back the best with lots of Las Vegas-style flash and noise in the casino. Their hotel is colorful and fun with tropical decor and very, very quiet guest rooms. The Grand is classy, but a bit dull and nothing like the wonderful pre-Katrina version, sadly. The free drinks, however, are plentiful, huge and in nice big glasses.

In case you aren't quite sure where the Mississippi Gulf Coast is, below is a map. This is the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, home of the best shrimp in the world.


Although the map looks like there's been an earthquake on the coast between New Orleans and Mobile it's just showing the distances to the heart of the casino coast.

Coming soon more travel news. There's a long car trip to Maine to see my family and another Princess Cruise adventure this time to, you guessed it, Jamaica. Tune in here for details as they happen.