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Birthday Trip September 2018

My birthday is September 14th, this year we celebrated the following weekend. I love live music and especially live rock by some of my favorite artist. I have seen most of my favorites over the years, but I have never had the opportunity to see Melissa Etheridge. When I heard that she was going to be playing at the Hard Rock casino in Biloxi, I had to go! The fact that is was one week after my birthday gave me an excellent excuse too.

One of my friends loves to go to Biloxi so she and her fiancée went with us. We stayed a the IP casino and Ubered to the hard rock for Dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, a little (and I mean little!) gambling. Rob and I hate to throw money away so we put $20 in the electronic roulette machine and sat for about an hour playing. At one point we were down about $5.00 but mostly we were up $5-40. When we cashed out we had won $35.00. During out time at th machine we each had 2 drinks and enjoyed playing. Basically we were paid $35 to play and drink. Not a bad night.

The concert was at 8:00, they opened the doors to the venue at 6:30, we went in at 7:30 so that we could get a good spot to stand. We bought cheap seats and it was standing only. There are a few “poles” or metal columns throughout the place and we found one close to the front to lean on. Once Melissa came out on stage, she surprised us by playing the drums. Rob even said that’s not Melissa Etheridge! But it was, I didn’t know she was such a musician! These girls in front of us kept talking so we gave up our pole to move to a better spot to hear Melissa from. The sound in the Hard Rock is really pretty good, but you get the best sound from the middle of the floor. She did all of our favoite songs and even thought the whole concert only lasted about an hour and a half it was a really good show and we both are really glad that we went.

IPhone pictures

After the concert we took an Uber back to the IP and crashed. No we were not drunk, just old! The next morning after breakfast we headed out to take our time driving home. We planned on doing a little exploring on the way. I have wanted for awhile now to go to the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge. So that is where we headed. We ran into a little rain but that was not going to stop us. Once we got to the refuge, we went to the visitor center and gathered all the info about the cranes and watched the short informative video. It really is sad that this species has been almost completely wiped out by loss of habitat. The work that has been done by the conservationists has been remarkable. There are about 100 of these amazing birds left due to their efforts.

We decided to walk the nature trail and take our chances with the rain. The trail is about a mile or so loop. It was wet in spots and most of the wildflowers had already fallen or died off. But I did see a few and there are tons of carnivorous plants along the trail.

A few of the wildflowers

The trail was a nice walk through the woods. Toward the end of the trail we came up on some of the local carnivorous plants. Pitcher plants were everywhere! We have seen them in Florida before but not in this quantity. They were everywhere and several different varieties.

Pitcher Plants

At the end of the trail but still about a 1/4 mile from our car the rain came. I really wanted to get more pictures of the plants but I didn’t want my camera to get damaged so I hid it under my shirt and we rushed toward the parking lot.

The ranger in the visitor center was really helpful and gave us his best tips on where we might see the cranes. Honestly I didn’t have much faith that we would see any, between the weather and the fact that there are only so few left, our expectations were low.

We went to the first place that he told us about and there were no birds, the 2nd place.....we saw 3! I was so excited and it stopped raining so I could open the sunroof and stand up to get some pictures. They were in tall grass so having the advantage of being up high helped with visibility.

After we got the shots we headed to the next location and we saw 2 more. They apparently like Coca Cola!

Once we got our fill of the Cranes we headed on down the road toward home. We stopped in Alabama at Weeks Bay National Esuarine Research Reserve. It was a good place for a potty break and another walk in the woods. If you know me, you know that I love to walk in the woods! There were a few exhibits inside the visitor center and a nice boardwalk through the woods that ended at the bay. I didn’t take a ton of pictures but I did get a few more flower pics and it was a good walk.

After this we headed to Navarre Beach where we grabbed a late lunch and sat in the car eating overlooking the bay. Over all it was a great way to celebrate my birthday! Live music, friends and nature. I couldn’t ask for anything else.

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