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in msuor cities such as New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Prices for April are up 24 percent over last April; in Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco, April rates have risen 16 to 19 percent, according to travel industry consultants.
DU. cherry blossoms
The forecast for Washington’s famed cherry trees is official: Their blossoms should peak April 4-9, in the middle of the annual cherry blossom festival, scheduled for March 26-April 10. Among the most popular events is the Cherry Blossom Parade April 9. This year’s festival celebrates the 93rd anniversary of the gift of the trees from Japan. Most of the trees lining the Tidal Basin are descendants of those presented to the United States by Japan in 1912 to mark 60 years of friendly relations. Check out details at www.nationalcherry blossomfestival.org.
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St. Louis, Miss., the second Saturday of every month from March through December.
Stories by Susan Langenhennig
Staff writer BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss.
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i ' is hanging low on the horizon as a train crosses Bay of St. Louis, its horn briefly drowning the jazz band providing mood music on the corner of Main Street.
It’s a warm evening in early March. A breeze blows off the water, keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Folks clad in sandals and shorts stroll the sidewalks for the Second Saturday Old Town gallery openings in this lovely bay-side village.
An aging artist with Andy Warhol hair and a friendly smile hawks acrylic scenes of seagulls and fish for $20 each from his briefcase on a park bench.
At the gallery next door, a young couple pushing a baby carriage stops to
A pier over the bay is a good place to be as the sun starts to set over the water.
(top of page) The trains that cross the bay between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian, Miss., are a familar sight to those who live in and around the two laid-back towns.
admire a painting of an egret with a $1,000 price tag.
On the corner, folks drop spare change into the band’s tip jar.
It’s one of those perfect Gulf Coast moments. Press the pause button on life’s hectic pace and just watch the sunset, sip some wine and people watch.
Just an hour’s drive from New Orleans and a 30-minute jaunt from Slidell, Bay St. Louis is an ideal spring getaway, a chance to freeze-frame busy schedules for a few days and relax in a laid-back place where polo shirts and flip flops are appropriate attire.
See BAY, Z)-S
A cabbage palm roof at Juana’s Pagodas bar in Navarre Beach, Fla., survived Hurricane Ivan with minimal damage, but the owner decided it was time last month to replace the nine-year-old roof. Workers Richard Clark, left, and Lee Hill remove the palms over the bandstand.
Florida and Alabama coast still making comeback
STAFF PHOTO BY SCOTT THRELKELD
GULF SHORES, Ala.
fans take heart: Even Ivan can’t stop the mullets from flying.
The popular strip of beaches stretching from Gulf Shores, Ala., to Pensacola and Navarre, Fla., were some of the hardest hit when Hurricane Ivan hit parts of the Gulf Coast early in the morning of Sept. 16,2004.
That strip includes the Flora-Bama, a popular Perdido Key watering hole that straddles (literally) the Alabama/ Florida state line and is known, among other things, for its, ahem, most interesting of festivals, the annual Interstate Mullet Toss.
Mullets, those slippery fish that love
See COMEBACK, D-8
But the beaches are ready, hotels are opening and the mullets are jumping
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