My daughter and I went on vacation July, 2008. We live in Missouri and she wanted to see the beach. My husband had to work so I decided to take her myself. I told her it had to be someplace fairly close because I only had 4 days. She was 21 and her only real vacations were in 2005 when we took her to Texas to a Nascar Race, and 2007 to Atlantic City, Georgia to another Nascar Race. As you can imagine, she was really excited and immediately went online and started looking for a place to go that was about an 8-9 hour drive. She found Biloxi, Mississippi and from the pictures online it looked great! We knew it had been destroyed a few years ago by the hurricane “Katrina”, but the hotel she found was across the street from the beach and had a casino for night entertainment. It had been rebuilt and looked great. So we booked the hotel and planned the trip.
We left on Monday so traffic was not an issue. The weather was great and it took about 9 hours to get there. The strip along the beach was all under construction from the hurricane, but it wasn’t to bad. The hotel was called Treasure Bay and was beautiful. As soon as we checked in my daughter couldn’t wait to see the beach. We walked across the street to the beach and when we got there she was like, “where is the blue water”. The water was green and smelled. She walked out a little ways and could not even see her feet. She was so disappointed. Well, we went back to our hotel and in the elevator there was a couple of guys and they asked if we came to Biloxi for the cassino’s and we said no we came to see the beach. They laughed and said we should of went 2 more hours to Gulf Shores if we wanted to see a nice beach. The water is blue and the beach sand is white. Well, that just made her more upset because she checked Gulf Shores online and it cost to much to stay in the hotels, because they are right on the beach. We went back to our room for about an hour and decided to go get something to eat and come back and check out the casino.
Once we had our belly’s full we came back to the hotel and went into the casino. Neither of us had ever been to one so this was an experience. We played the penny slot machines and had a great time. I couldn’t believe how fast you could go through money in one of these places, but it was fun. After we spent our alloted limit we put on ourselves for that night we went back to our room and called it a night, about 12:00 am.
The next morning we decided to go souvenir shopping and then went to the mall that was just down the road from our hotel. That was fun. The rest of the day we just hung out by the hotel pool. That night we wanted to go all the way down the strip and see what else was there. To our surprise there were allot of cassino’s. One of them was a Hard Rock Casino. It had the Big Neon Guitar in front that was beautiful. You could hear the music outside, and this was really cool. All the way down the strip were cassino’s. After going to the bridge, we decided we had gone far enough and turned around to go back to the hotel. Then it was back to the casino for another round. I think my daughter was getting hooked on the casino. This time we were more brave and bet nickels and quarters and had allot of fun. We still didn’t win very much and went to bed about 1:00 am.
This is our last day here and my daughter wanted to go to the casino, again today, so we went for about an hour. She really was getting brave and started playing the poker machine, but I still played the slots. She was winning and was up about $120. I told her to cash out while she was ahead and lets get something to eat for lunch. After lunch I told her we should drive the 2 hours to Gulf Shores and see a real beach. She said that sounds like a plan. We had no trouble finding it and it was gorgeous The hotels are huge and right on the beach. Blue water and waves coming in with the white sand was what she loved. This is what she had wanted to see at Biloxi. The beach had allot of people there playing Frisbee, and just hanging out. The beach at Biloxi had a handful of people at it and no one was in the water unlike Gulf Shores. After awhile of walking around and going into the water we left so we could get back to our hotel before it got to late. On our way back she said we our going to save our money and come back to Gulf Shores and stay in one of these hotels on the beach someday soon.
We arrived back at Treasure Bay about 9:00 that night. We packed our bags and was ready to leave in the morning. Neither of us were tired so we went to the casino for one last go of it. We had allot of fun then and both came home with a small amount of winnings.
The ride home was good with hardly any traffic, beautiful weather again, and we were home by about 4:00 pm. All in all the trip was memorable and fun. We had a good time even if we were disappointed in the beach at Biloxi. After Katrina Biloxi is rebuilding and looks pretty good. If you want to go and have a good time in cassino’s it is a fun place to visit. But I wouldn’t advise going for the beach. My daughter and her friend are planning to go to Gulf Shores or Pensacola this summer.
