Hitched and Rolling

This morning we woke up in New Orleans. Pleasantly, we were more well hydrated and rested than one might expect. Claire’s credit card provided a hospitality stipend at the hotel restaurant which Claire generously shared with us honeymooners in the form of breakfast. A couple showers and a packed bag or two later we were ready to call an uber to the suburb of Metairie where Duke and the van patiently waited. 

After gathering our vehicle and its canine occupant, Hitched and Rolling was officially back to Rolling. Leaving the greater New Orleans area, it was clear that our surroundings had quickly become substantially more coastal and Florida-like. 

After we entered Mississippi we took a small detour on route 90 to see the coast. We ended up in the town of Waveland, MS which has signs referring to itself as the “ground zero” of hurricane Katrina, presumably where the storm made landfall 20 years ago. With that context, our drive around Waveland was painted somewhat grave, and we couldn’t help but notice the lack of mature construction – everything was fairly new. Bre read the first hand account of a Waveland resident’s experience with Katrina that she found online as we drove through town. It was a bit haunting in the fog. 

Our destination today was the Hideaway RV Park which was just beyond and through Alabama in the Sunshine State. This park had come highly recommended to us by Jiffy. 

Jiffy is stationed at the Air Force base in Biloxi, Mississippi and has lived there for a couple years. As he has explored the region he has been keeping a running list of saved recommendations, in the form of an extensive network of dropped Google Maps location pins, a resource which he kindly shared with us. 

This made choosing a lunch spot significantly less difficult, and we settled on a place called “The Shed” which was just off i10. We would later learn that The Shed has been featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives and a bunch of other food-centric programs.

As we pulled in we realized that this place was more like a compound than a restaurant. There was the main area that had a BBQ restaurant, there was a rambling addition where live music could be hosted, another which was seemly geared toward seafood, and then an RV park. We elected to investigate the seafood area given our coastal location. When in Rome, right? 

This proved to be one of the best culinary decisions of the trip so far. Bre and I both like to try local cuisine wherever we end up, and neither of us has spent much time in the gulf coast region, so we pretty much deferred to Will, our bartender, and ordered what he suggested. Will is a scientist, specializing in oyster habitat and rehabilitation, so our experience was colored by his knowledge. We “started” with a bucket of roasted oysters and and sandwich that I can only describe as an alligator cheesesteak. As the food started coming out, and because we were the only people at the restaurant, my attention was drawn across the bar to the very-active backyard smoker around the corner, and Will, who was enjoying his role as our culinary tour guide, encouraged me to go investigate. 

Apparently once a defunct pizza oven, the smoker was in full swing curing fish into what’s known as “Biloxi Bacon”. Trace, the operator, was pleased to give me a tour of his command center. Having toured the operation and returned to my seat Will smiled and told me that Trace liked us, and that Trace was going to “really feed us” now. 

And boy, was he right. We had ordered two items of the menu but every few minutes for the next hour or so, Trace brought over another piece of something. “Biloxi Bacon”, “Sauce Picant”, “Fondue Grits”, “Crawfish Bread”, each item was like out of a movie. All unordered, we were just along for the ride. The more we enjoyed the dishes the more this homegrown chef wanted to bring over and share with us. It was like a self perpetuating cycle spawning authentic Mississippi coastal cuisine right out of a professional smoker and onto our plates.

It is experiences like this that make this mode of travel so rewarding. A huge thank you to Will and Trace for sharing a sampling of coastal Mississippi cooking with us. 

But the day was not over. Back in the van and eastward we went. We entered and left Alabama, the third state of the day, before cruising into Florida as the sun was setting. We made it to the campsite around 6:30 and after checking in (and letting the car sit for around 10 minutes with the windows closed) we noticed a strong rotten egg smell. As of writing this is still unresolved. We made friends with some neighbors at the RV park, decades more experienced automobile travelers than we are, who were kind enough to investigate. They suspect that it might be a dead animal in the dash. Uneasy about the diagnosis, as we were reluctantly accepting our smelly quarters for the evening, the propane alarm started going off, despite the windows and side door being open. Then it went off again. That was it. After two propane alarms plus the rotten egg smell we decided to go to walmart to get a second alarm. Maybe ours is broken. They were out of stock at walmart and it was right around midnight so we went with the nuclear option – we drove right to the fire station.

Our suspicion that the fire station would have some kind of tool for propane detection was correct. They used the mechanical handheld sniffer around the vehicle but it came up 100% negative for propane, none at all, not even a slight whiff. Having ruled out the most harmful of scenarios, we went back to the RV pack and have laid down next to open, screened in windows away from the smell, which has lessened from driving around with the windows open. Another eventful and fun day on hitched and rolling.