So I'm about a week late on posting about this. Last weekend (October 12 & 13) we went to the Mississippi Coast for Crusin' The Coast 2012.
I first heard about Crusin' The Coast from a girl I work with who's from the Mississippi coast. I wanted to give Keegan a wedding present that was car related, but wasn't sure what. I was looking around for a track that would allow Keegan to take a drive on the track, but the prices of trips like that were ridiculous. My co-worker said that every year thousands of classic cars cover the Mississippi coast which sounded like something Keegan would be interested in, so I looked into it a bit more. It sounded exactly like something Keegan would love to do so I made hotel reservations back in May and set on hiding this secret for the next few months.
During the wedding I gave Keegan a card that explained that we'd be going to Crusin' the Coast and that I already had a hotel room reserved. The two month wait was hard, but finally the weekend came. We left our TinyTown around 3:30 and made it down to Ocean Springs, where our hotel was, around 8. It was dark out, but we could see classic cars already driving around.
We grabbed dinner at the Magic Mushroom (an awesome pizza joint) and went to check into our room.
This is where things got....interesting. You see, back in May when I reserved our room, the hotels had already jacked up their prices for this specific weekend. Our hotel room which normally cost about $60/night (which I found out afterwards) was now $120/night. Since I was trying to keep this a surprise from Keegan and I had limited funds, I couldn't splurge on our normal hotels, so I was stuck with a room at Howard Johnson, a hotel chain that I had never heard of before. I had high hopes that for $120/night it was going to be a good hotel, but.......
Not so much. Everything was PINK! The walls, the bedding, the curtains, all pink. The bed was lopsided and the pillows were hard as rocks. The "bedding" consisted of a sheet, what I thought was a piece of foam and the top cover which was so slippery you couldn't keep it on if you wanted to. Instead of towels, we got two bath mats. To say the least, it was the worst hotel I've ever been to. Both Keegan and I slept about 3 hours and at 5 am, we decided enough was enough. We got up, dressed, and went downstairs to check out. The clerk refunded our money, but after looking at the bill, he refunded it to a Mastercard, not the card I made the reservation with. I've never owned a Mastercard in my life, so I don't know who got my money. We were too tired and frustrated to argue with him, so we just left.
After checking out, we went down to the beach to watch the sun rise, something I've always wanted to do.
Overlooking the Gulf of Mexico
After watching the sun rise, we went to IHOP for breakfast. Nothing too special, just quick and easy. Next, we drove down to Bay St. Louis to look at the cars. There were a few blocks that were lined up and down with some beautiful classics. It was awesome to get out of our car and walk around them, looking inside and at all of the small details.
This truck had (almost) all of the license plates from 1935 when the truck was made.
This car was equipped with cow hide accents on the seats and wood floors.
I tried to convince Keegan to buy this Buick, but the $89,000 price tag was a bit much. How awesome would I look picking up (future) kids in this?!
This Mustang had a pretty interesting carbon fiber detail on the hood. Personally, not my taste, but cool to see none the less.
After wandering around Bay St. Louis for a few hours, we drove back to the Coliseum in Gulfport to see the auto auction and swap meet. Unfortunately both of them cost money to get into (which we didn't know,) so we only went to the swap meet. We didn't find anything we wanted to purchase (or swap for) but Keegan did get to talk to the head production engineer for the transmission he's planning on putting in his Corvette which was cool and pretty informative.
In the Coliseum's parking lot, there were some pretty cars as well.
This rat rod had a PBR can for a coolant reservoir as well as a brass knuckles shifter and burlap sacks as chair covers.
Keegan was very excited about seeing a Ford GT 40. Apparently this is a very expensive car.
After walking around the swap meet for a bit, we decided we were exhausted. We drove home (after a stop at MugShots in Hattiesburg) and passed out. Next year we're hoping to get a bunch of friends to come down with us and perhaps rent a beach house for the weekend instead of worrying about hotel rooms. Overall it was an awesome experience. I think Keegan has plans to get the Corvette in tip-top shape so we can enter next year.
