When the fabulous city of Biloxi hit my travel calendar, I had no idea where it was or what it was all about, but knew that I was REALLY excited to go! This was all before I found out that they have casinos….and pretty big ones at that, I’m not talking your garden variety California Indian Casinos…. I mean MGM/Hard Rock/Imperial Palace Casino Resorts. After Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, this little vacation town was demolished and the hotels had to be rebuilt from the ground up. In fact, prior to the storm it had the 3rd highest population in the state, now down to #5 even though it is more than 7 years later (Thank you informative cab driver from the airport)!

Getting there was a little more challenging than I care to think about (apparently one of the more expensive and least accessible cities to get to that has gaming in this great country)…and getting home was worse, thank you very much sudden, late spring, violent thunder and lightning storms. I am most certainly glad that I had the opportunity to go, because without doing it for business, I would have probably never knew this little gem existed.

My take-aways from this very short jaunt….

1.) I have added the term “flounder gigging” to the vocabulary arsenal- apparently stabbing flat fish while waist high in water is quite the form of entertainment in the gulf coast.

2.) We are very spoiled in California to not have to endure cigarette smoke in most places any more!

3.) Shout-out to Big Al for the laughs!