Where: Ship Island, Mississippi
When: spring, summer, fall
If you like: the outdoors and sports, conservation
Why you should go: It wasn’t that long ago that Mississippi’s Ship Island was actually Ship Islands, plural. Hurricane Camille split it in half in 1969, and over time it inched toward healing naturally—until Hurricane Katrina barrelled through Gulf Islands National Seashore and reinstated the damage. This time, the National Park Service stepped in to save the treasured barrier island, and in 2020, after a $400 million restoration project (the second largest in NPS history), Ship Island was made whole for the first time in over five decades.
Today it plays host to hermit crabs, ospreys, herons, and beach mice, to name a few species—plus day-trippers who make the twelve-mile journey by ferry from Gulfport. “As we cruise along, there are dolphins riding beside us and birds following the boat,” says Kevin Buckel, a director at Ship Island Excursions, the family-owned ferry business that will mark a century of operation next year. Halfway through the ride, passengers lose cell phone service—all the better to unplug and snorkel in emerald waters, hunt for pen shells and lightning whelks on the beach, sit in the shade of the circa-1858 Civil War site Fort Massachusetts, and scope out all sorts of avians, including reddish egrets and magnificent migratory frigate birds.
G&G tip: Among the velvety, quartz-heavy white sands of the island, look out for patches and swirls of black. No, it’s not a sign of pollution; the black comes from zircon, a mineral from the Appalachian Mountains that washes down to the Gulf and deposits on the barrier islands.
