Along the beach

This is the latest post in a series on Ocean Springs, Miss. Scroll down for the others and click the photos for enlargements.

I pulled off to the side of the road as well as I could. Front Beach Drive is a bit narrow, nothing like the four-lane Beach Boulevard in Biloxi. It curves between the sandy beach and the properties to the north that usually are supported by four-foot walls.

Here is where I met Jean, an older woman who lives in a condo along this road. The first floor of her condo was severely damaged by Katrina. She said she would have much prefered her second floor be destroyed, because she's an artist, and she did her paintings on the first floor.

Earlier in the week, she was able to pull one of her paintings from her condo's wreckage, untouched by the storm. She hopes to find more.

Jean was walking along Front Beach Drive, "sightseeing" before her condo association meeting, at which they were to decided whether to rebuild the damaged condos.

I didn't get a good photo of her condo, but Jean did tell me about some of the other properties on the beach.

The photo you see above is of a house built in 1918. It survived Camille in 1969, and it looks as though it will be able to be repaired after the damage wrought by Katrina.

The owners has been meticulously redecorating the house, room by room, to reflect its Victorian roots. Jean had taken a tour of the home last month.

"It was beautiful," she said. "At least it was on August 28th."