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| All my boys. |
The plan was to stay in Mississippi for three full days. I assumed that it would be fun-filled beach time with a trip into New Orleans during one of the days. Instead, Mississippi greeted us with rain and then thunderstorms, and finished up with a big side of rain and thunderstorms. As is necessary on these trips, the Munschs rolled with the punches. I mean first, we whined and complained, but then we reorganized and made do.
On the way into Buccaneer State Park on the Mississippi Delta/Gulf Coast, we noticed the Stennis Space Center. Never tiring of the cosmos, we decided that the Infinity Space Center would be a good rainy day activity. The smallish science center offered an outdoor boardwalk where we were reminded relentlessly not to feed the alligators. This excited me and made me believe that we were ensured a gator sighting. As with most wild life, the gators did not care about my desire to see them and remained elusive doing whatever gators do on an overcast, hot Sunday in June. This outcome was most appreciated by Lucas, who I'm fairly certain would knock one of us down as bait in his retreat from almost anything in nature.
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| I wonder if these two are related? |
After taking numerous photos of rocket engines and other spacey things, we headed down to where Logtown had once stood. It was here that thousands of people were forced to move so that NASA could safely test rockets and engines without endangering lives. A light mist began to fall when we stopped at the desolate boardwalk which led into the swamp. That was enough for Lucas to nope out and stay behind in the car. A choice I don't particularly blame him for in retrospect.
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| It's like I think that by oversmiling, somehow Lucas will just smile a little. |
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| Human for scale. Marcus in front of part of the Saturn 5 rocket stage. |
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| Samus. |
Unlike up at the science center, the bugs here were fierce and curious about our presence, diving into faces and ears. We began the Australian wave and persisted up the trail as I was sure this would be the place I would see an alligator. As we moved forward the bugs began to dissipate, but only because the light mist turned into a proper rainfall. As the rain increased, we decided to turn back so that we didn't get soaked, even though none of us had been truly dry all day due to the humidity. Sitting happily in the car on our return was a much less damp Lucas playing on his phone.
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| Lucas irritated that it's raining and he's in said rain. |
As the day went on so did the rain. Only now the rain seemed fitting considering the next part of our day, attending my cousin Tyler's memorial service via a web cast. We found a parking spot on the deserted beach and grieved together with my Van Dover family even though we were a thousand miles apart. The fiercely crashing waves and gray rainy sky seemed to echo our collective sadness. When the service was over, we got out of the car and ran to the water both in honor of Tyler and thankful for each other.
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