5 Jan 2019
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| At the top. Beautiful day and great view! |
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| Doreen is working her way up looking over the handrail! |
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| Great view looking west down Highway 90 and the Biloxi Beach |
The Biloxi Lighthouse was completed and placed into operation in 1848. It is one of the cast iron lighthouses on the Gulf Coast. It is brick-lined for strength. It measures 61 ft to the top of the tower and the original lens was a fourth order Fresnel lens. The tower is owned by the City of Biloxi and is operated today as a private aid to navigation. The lighthouse was damaged several times by the hurricanes that impacted the coast, most recently by Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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| Water lines are marked on the inside of the brick wall. |
We finished up at the lighthouse and finalized our plans over the phone with Philbrook's for dinner. We had time to make a quick trip to Hobby Lobby and then headed back east over the Ocean Springs bridge.
I took Doreen down a road I used to travel when I was stationed down here. It is a beautiful drive along the coast in Ocean Springs, and leads back to a harbor. Here are some shrimp boat pictures with the long booms and nets.
From Ocean Springs we headed back up to Charlie and Elaine Philbrook's for lunch. We had a beverage and shared some great conversation.
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It was so great to see them! We love them like family, because they are a part of our military family. We hope Elaine recovers quickly and they can get back out on the road with their motor home soon.
After we got back to the RV we were contacted by Bob and Joyce Childre, also military comrades and also stationed with us at Loring Air Force Base Maine! They live in Florida and travel extensively with their motor home. They are on their way back to Florida from a trip out west with a diversion to Arkansas. The Keesler AFB FamCamp is full, so they are boondocking (camping without utility hookups) at one of the local casinos. We hope to hook up with them tomorrow morning and we are going to tour Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis's home and Presidential library. Monday morning we pull chocks and head for our next stop - New Orleans!
4 comments:
What a nice day once again to enjoy the nice weather!! Glad you were able to share a meal with Charlie and Elaine! Crazy to see the water levels in the lighthouse! Hard to imagine. Looks like fun!!
Was a great day! Glad it worked out we could see them a couple times. A great friend and mentor to me. An example of how someone can have a HUGE impact and influence in someone's career. Had Charlie not been a great supervisor, encouraging me and helping me along the way, I might have said screw it and not joined the Air Guard when I got out of active duty. Then my 42 year, 2 month and 16 day military career would have turned out totally different!
As always, to have Ed and Doreen take time to stop in with us and catch up on our times together and find out what's going on in our lives, is a very special occasion to Elaine and I. Elaine's current recovery has been a burden on her being able to be comfortable traveling even short distances. Ed and Doreen were gracious enough to come way out in the woods to our home to allow us to visit and meet their sweet Liberty. When we met we were a lot younger, but caught up with one another later on in life. When we worked together at the Loring AFB, transmitter site we had a communications mission that depended on a site that was maintained to the enth degree. Ed was one very special person who took his tasks to heart. The kind of person who today you would refer to as a true "Patriot" who went on to serve our country with a long and dedicated history. When we attended the Chief's retirement ceremony in Iowa a lot of very important and high ranking folks were passing on their praises of their times working with him, in the States and overseas in Iraq. It was a pleasure and still is to have known him and hear all the good things accomplished during his career. Knowing we only touched the tip of the iceberg. It was a pleasure being with his very sweet Doreen who has been his stalwart backer for all these years and whom we were proud to see is doing so well after some health issues last year. To this wonderful family we bestow the happiest New Year blessings and travel prayers through the coming journeys. And Liberty as well. God Bless.
Charlie, words cannot express our appreciation to you and Elaine for your friendship over the years. Any successes I had during my military career were a direct result of your mentorship starting in the northern tip of Maine with that 18 year old Airman fresh out of tech school. Doreen and I so appreciated you guys making the journey all the way up to Iowa for my military retirement. I am so glad we were able to get together down here and we are praying for Elaine's speedy recovery. Thank you so much for your hospitality. We are looking forward to camping with you guys in the near future!
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