WOODEN BEARS AND THE PURPLE PARROT

From Jackson, we ventured into the deep South to Hattiesburg, home of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby.  We got reservations at Paul B. Johnson State Park, which had an interesting below-water-level approach.  This was more fun on the scoot.

It’s on a beautiful lake with inlets full of water lilies.

With carved bears standing sentry throughout the park.

The heat wave hadn’t let up, so we did our morning walks as early as possible.

Walks and ablutions over, we offloaded the scoot and set out for Camp Shelby, which was a huge training center during WWII, and now is mostly devoted to national guard training.  But it looked like a ghost town to us.  Not a soul stirring anywhere.  And precious little signage to guide us to the museum.  When they DID have signage close to the museum, it misdirected us to the back.  I hope they give better training to the guard than they do directions to the public.

Although this was supposed to be a national museum, it still was pretty Mississippi-centric, with a lot of coverage of units and individuals from the state.  We had the place to ourselves so we could linger over anything of interest,

and there was quite a bit.  We had to take this in honor of Mom, who was a Wave back in WWII.

The thing that fascinated Loni the most was the display about how they launched and recovered seaplanes from early battleships.  If the ocean was too rough for a landing, the ship would steam in a tight circle, creating a “pond” of calm water within the circle.  The plane would land, get hoisted up, mission accomplished.  I’d never heard of this before and am somewhat skeptical about how calm a spot you could create that way.  I was most intrigued by the exhibit concerning German POW’s.  Camp Shelby was one of the main detention centers.  Frankly, those guys lived better in detention than our troops did overseas.  They even had a soccer league.  We spent several hours enjoying the exhibits and the fine air conditioning.  Then it was back outside for the ten mile trip back to the park.  We didn’t linger too much on the outside displays of tanks and helos.  Hot hot hot!

Loni didn’t feel like cooking when we got back, so . . . enter the Purple Parrot.  We had picked up a Mississippi tourist guide at the border, and one of the articles was on cuisine.  They mentioned a chef in Hattiesburg who was doing pretty upscale stuff with traditional Southern dishes.  We phoned for a reservation at his place, the Purple Parrot, duded ourselves up (I’m sure there were some puzzled looks from the local campers) and motored out on the scoot for the 15 mile trip back to town.  For once, the guidebook puffery had substance.  This was a very nice place, equal to anything in LA for decor, most patrons dressed up (ignore the buffoon in the T-shirt across the way), and the food was great.  Found an excellent Spanish white (and at a reasonable price) on the twenty page wine list, which went well with our fish dinners and my appetizer of fried green tomatoes with lump crabmeat topping.  Yes, it was delicious.  We drank it all, ate everything put before us, including totally unnecessary desserts, and left very happy campers indeed, even though the pricing was LA quality as well.  We even managed to keep the scoot upright all the way home.