Gulf Adventures

We decided to leave the Island and do some exploring along the Gulf on our last day on the island.  We piled into our vehicles and drove over to Gator Ranch in Moss Point, MS.  We toured around their park amazed by the size of the Gators, some of us were brave enough to hold a young gator (not me) and then piled into an airboat for a ride around the swamp!!  It was a lot of fun and what is even more exciting is that we say the guys from the show Gator Boys just hanging out when we got back from our airboat ride.  I have to admit I was a little star struck just standing there hanging out by them like it was no big deal.  

After all that gator excitement we piled back into the vans and headed over to Ocean Springs, MS for some lunch at The Shed.  Now this place has been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (a show that Frankie makes watch more than I might like to admit) and Frankie has also seen them compete on the show BBQ Pit Masters.  Frankie was like a kid in the candy store at this stop.  This place was built buy a guy collecting "trash" and putting it together to make a shed and then continued to gather items from around the country to build quite the establishment.  We enjoyed our bbq lunch and then spent at least a half hour exploring the grounds.  Frankie spotted their competition smoker and couldn't pass up the opportunity to inspect it a little bit.  They had an old phone booth so I was trying to explain what it was to Colton and he thought it was hilarious that people had to go into a booth and insert quarters to make a phone call... oh have things have changed!  We also of course took plenty of photos and as we were taking a family photo in front of their main entrance one of the employees came out and asked if he could take a picture of us to put on their Facebook page... guess we must look like pretty awesome people! 

Below is their competition smoker.... pretty sweet!!

After lunch we headed back to the island, making just one pit stop to pick up some fresh boiled crawfish.  We got back to the island, put on our beach gear and spent the afternoon on the beach building a sand alligator, a sand turtle, turning Marissa into a mermaid, playing in the water and some of the brave ones enjoyed their crawfish. I do not eat those things... the minute you pull them apart you can see poop so there is no way I will put that into my mouth, I prefer my food to be poop free!  It was a perfect afternoon and we made the most of it!