Elaborate costumes, screaming crowds and police escorts — this must be what it feels like to be a rock star.

No, I'm not on tour with Lady Gaga. I'm in Biloxi, Mississippi for Mardi Gras, the yearly Fat Tuesday celebration that preceeds Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season. And on this warm, sunny February Tuesday, the people of Mississippi's Gulf Coast are preparing for a giant party.

Mardi Gras parades may be most famous in New Orleans, but the tradition originated in Alabama and has spread to cities all along the Gulf Coast, from Texas to Florida. After New Orleans, Biloxi has one of the biggest Mardi Gras parades in the region, with more than 120 floats and a crowd of more than 100,000 onlookers. And while the idea of Mardi Gras has been tainted by some Big Easy debauchery, the festivities in Biloxi (and most other destionations) are safe and family-friendly.

That doesn't, however, mean that they are boring. Walking around the float staging area today before the parade began, I saw a motley assortment of characters loading up onto colorfully decorated floats. The cast ranged from the elaborately costmed King and Queen of Mardi Gras to pirates, soldiers, Angry Birds, bananas and many more. These folks are all affiliated with the various local businesses and "krewes" (social clubs) that sponsored floats in the Mardi Gras parade. In the hours before the parade began, they loaded untold millions of plastic beads onto their floats (as well as food and drinks), and pumped up music from on-board loudspeakers to help set a festive mood.

The real fun began when the floats took off down the parade route. The Mississippi Gulf Convention and Visitors Bureau enters a float in the parade each year, and invited me to join them and some other journalist as a participant in the parade. So I climed to the top of our double decker float, claimed my spot on the left side, and warmed up my throwing arm.

To describe the experience as exciting would be a severe understatment. From the time our float turned the first corner on the parade route, we were met with the enthusiastic screams of thousands of revelers. Of course, they weren't exactly screaming for us, but for the colorful strands of beads that we tossed out into the crowd. It's amazing how much excitement a strand of beads can stir up in the most unlikely of people. All along the parade route, we passed an endless number of people who eagerly clamored for our beads. The thrill seemed to transcend normal social barriers, uniting people of every age, sex, race and social circle into one giant party.

And so for two hours, I threw my heart out, launching hundreds or thousands of strands of beads into the crowd — in such an energetic atmosphere, it's impossible to keep count. Some parade-goers attracted my throwing attention with interesting costumes and funny signs. Others simply made me take notice with their wild hand-waving and enthusiastic screams. Many times, the person who caught the beads that I threw would shoot me a smile, a wave or a wink of gratitude. It's a fun and rewarding feeling.

At the end of the two-hour parade, my throwing arm was sore, and I wore a permanent smile plastered on my face. If you ever get a chance to ride a Mardi Gras float, you simply must do it. And anyone looking for a great mid-winter party should begin making plans to attend Mardi Gras in 2013.

Revelers loading up a parade float

A line of beads at my throwing station

Visitors check outthe floats before the parade begins

The Gulf Coast's 2012 King of Mardi Gras

Float riders get in to the spirit of Marid Gras

An elaborately decorated Mardi Gras float

When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in 2005, it made its mark on Mississippi's gulf coast. In Gulfport and Biloxi, the storm destroyed casinos, museums, homes and other structures; the nearby town of Bay St. Louis suffered incredible damage. But in the years since, the towns along the Mississippi coastline have rebuilt and renewed themselves, making the most of the story and welcoming visitors to learn about it.

I toured Bay St. Louis and parts of Biloxi today, seeing both evidence of the storm and the rebuilding that has taken place since then. We began in Bay St. Louis, the town that was hit the hardest. Though much of town has been rebuilt, several historic structures further inland survived. These include the Depot, a historic train station that now serves as a visitors center, and St. Rose de Lima Church. Another survivor is 100 Men DBA Hall, a historic music venue that was part of the "Chitlin Circuit" of blues joints throughout Mississippi in the early 20th century. Today the building is preserved as a historic site that groups can visit to learn about the rich African American cultural history of the area.

Downtown, Bay St. Louis has been almost completely rebuilt. Visitors will find numerous art galleries, craft shops and antique stores, which make an afternoon downtown a colorful event. The area also has a number of restaurants that serve seafood fresh from the Gulf, as well as other Southern specialties.

In Biloxi, several landmarks along the coast symbolize the city's resilience and recovery. During the storm, a surge of saltwater flooded inland areas, and many of the area's live oak trees died as a result of soaking in saltwater for eight hours or more. Rather than uproot these trees, locals fired up their chainsaws and carved them into beautiful outdoor sculptures, which both decorate the area and serve to memorialize the events of 2005.

Another symolic structure is the 1848 lighthouse that stands outside of Biloxi's visitors center. This white metal lighthouse has been an icon of the city for years, and locals and visitors alike were thrilled to see that the lighthouse survived the storm. Today, groups can take a tour of the small lighthouse, clmibing the circular stairway to the top for a look at the historic lamp and magnification lens, as well as a great view of Biloxi and the coastline.

Groups should also make time to visit Biloxi's Hurricane Katrina Memorial. Constructed by the crew of TV's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," this monument combines a colletion of items found scattered around town after the storm with a stately monument honoring those who lost their lives in the hurricane. The monument also has live oak that was masterfully carved and painted to create a tribute sculpture.

A tour of the Katrina sites in the area gives visitors an understanding of the storm and the damage it created in the community. But more moving than that lesson in history is the beauty of the communities that have reemerged, stronger and prouder than ever.

100 Men DBA Hall is part of Mississippi's Blues Trail

Clay Creations is one of sevral art galleries in Bay St. Louis

A colorful gift shop in downtown Bay St. Louis

Biloxi's 1848 lighthouse

Found objects on display at Biloxi's Hurricane Katrina Memorial

Most coastal destinations are known more for their beaches and resorts than for art and architecture. But in Biloxi, the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum is one of the region's cheif attractions, showcasing the work of a famous local artist in an architectural setting that is an acheivement in itself.

I'm spending a few days on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to celebrate Mardi Gras. While the big festivities are still a couple of days away, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau staff is showing me and some other journalists around the area, beginning with a reception and tour of the Ohr-O'keefe Museum.

The museum highlights the work of George Ohr, a local artist who billed himself as the "Mad Potter of Biloxi." Ohr's "madness" was probably more of a marketing ploy than a real mental illness, but the artwork he produced was brilliant nonetheless. The museum displays numerous pieces of Oh'rs pottery inside a star-shaped gallery, which also features some funny Orh quotes painted on the walls.

The unusual shape of the gallery is part of its architectural design. World-renowned architect Frank Ghery designed the museum, adding a touch of high architecture to the Gulf Coast skyline. Rather than creating one large museum building, Ghery designed the museum as a campus of several small gallery buildings, seperated by landscaped outdoor areas. Passing from one gallery to the next, visitors get a great view of beach, which sits just across the highway from the museum.

In addition to Ohr's pottery, the museum has a gallery with a wonderful collection of African American art. A changing exhibit gallery hosts two different exhibitinos each year, which can feature painting, sculpture and other works by area artists. The museum also has a great visitors center and gift shop, as well as a re-creation of a cabin built by a Biloxi African American family in the 1880s.

Ongoing work at the museum is repairing damage from Hurricane Katrina and opening new buildings that will enable the staff to expand exhibition space.

The museum's African American art gallery

Orh pottery displayed in the star-shaped gallery

A George Ohr quote

Inside the museum's Pleasant Reed House, a re-created 1880s home

It's the recurring dilema of the travel writer: When you spend a few days touring a destination, you always see and experience much more than you will actually be able to write about, or even to blog about.  So before I pack my bags and prepare to head to the airport tomorrow morning, here are some of my favorite photos from other parts of the trip that haven't appeared in the blog yet.

The outdoor pool at The Beach Club.

A riverside scene in the peaceful small community of Magnolia Springs.

One of several great shots from a dolphin-watching cruise in the Gulf.

Fort Morgan -- a Civil War-era fortress across the bay from Mobile.

The Wharf in Orange Beach has a large Ferris wheel, in addition to dozens of shops and restaurants.

Sunset at Gulf State Park, which features the longest pier on the Gulf Coast.

A glass-blowing demonstration in the Hot Shop at Orange Beach Arts Center.

Seafood lovers are used to seeing shrimp, crab, fish and oysters on their dinner plates, but to see them alive in their own habitat is something else altogether. Today I encountered many of these creatures up-close with an Alabama Gulf Coast company called Sailaway Charters.

I joined Sailaway's owner Capt. Skip, as well as a handful of other visitors, on a nature cruise of the bays and bayous near Orange Beach, Alabama. During our hour-and-a-half cruise, Capt. Skip demonstrated many of the techniques used by commercial fisherman to harvest shrimp, crab, oysters and other fish in the area. We began by trawling for shrimp with a net cast behind our pontoon boat. After a few minutes, Capt. Skip hoisted the net on board, and emptied out its contents to show us all of the different creatures that had come up.

By my count, we saw at least 16 types of fish, mollusks, shrimp and other creatures. For each one, the captain would hold up a specimen and point out its distinguishing characteristics, such as the markings on the underside of a blue crab that indicate its sex. Then, he would toss all of the "by-catch" back out into the gulf, where dozesn of gulls and a pair of dolphins followed behind our boat to catch an easy meal.

The excursion also included looks at crab traps and oyster harvesting. I left with a deeper appreciation of the beauty of these sea animals, as well as the hard work that commercial fishermen go through to bring them to our tables.

A tiny white shrimp

Capt. Skip and a blue crab

A pair of stingrays got caught up in the shirmp net.

Freshly pulled from the Gulf, oysters are unattractive creatures.

Lemurs love cameras. And I don't mean that they enjoy being photographed -- these energetic, curious animals love to nibble on, lick and play with cameras and other expensive electronic equipment.

Today I visited the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo, a small zoo where the staff encourages interactive experiences with wildlife. One of their most popular programs is Lemur Encounter, in which particpents sit in an enclosed tent with a quartet of juvenille lemurs. These exotic animals are members of the primate family, although they don't particularly look like monkies, and are native only to the island nation of Madagascar.

So I went into the tent, along with a handful of other visitors. When zoo director Patti Hall brought the four lemurs into the tent with us, they lept into a frenzie, playing a fast-paced game of follow-the-leader in circles around the tent. After a few minutes, though, they became curious about us, and began to jump into our laps, paw at our faces, and grab our cameras, sunglasses and anything else they could find to play with. By the end of the session, they had made friends with their visitors, snuggleing into our arms and letting us rub their bellies.

The lemur encounter is one of several programs like it at the zoo.  For next year, Hall hopes to have four such programs, including a playtime with young tiger cubs and an interactive reptile exhibit where guests can hold a baby alligator and albino python. If what I experienced today was any indication, the program is on its way to being a smash hit.

Many thousands of tourists come to Alabama's Gulf Coast every year, most to take advantage of its fine weather and beautiful beaches. But there is so much to see and do beyond the beach, and today I visited one of the area's most fascinating attractions, Alligator Alley.

Wesley Moore founded Alligator Alley in 2004, restoring sveral acres of natural cypress swampland that he owned back to its original purpose. Alligators have always been at home in this kind of habitat, and Moore decided to augment the gator population on his land with rescued alligators from other parts of the Southeast. Today there are some 170 gators at the farm, many of whom were brought to the sanctuary after being declared nuissances in populated areas.

I lost track of the number of gators I saw during my visit, which included a walk around the elevated boardwalk that Moore and friends built through the swamp. many of the are hidden just below the surface of the water, but I saw dozens sitting lazily on the higher ground as well. One gator at the site is particularly notorious: Nicknamed "Captain Crunch," this 13.5-foot, 900-pound reptile has the most forceful bite on record of any animal on earth. When his jaws snap down on a bit of prey or other piece of food, they exgert 2,982 pounds of force. (It takes 400-500 pounds of force to break a human's leg.)

But the highlight of a visit to Alligator Alley is feeding time -- three times a day, employees come out to do demonstration feedings with the alligators. My guide Evan crossed the safety fence and approached a riverbead full of hungry gators, armed with a long stick and cooler full of pork bits. To watch him feed these massive predators was both terrifying and amazing, as they would lunge out of the water with open jaws when he raised his arm with a fistfull of food. My favorite part was the satisfying "plunk" sound that the gator jaws made as the snapped shut around the hunks of meat.

Feeding time

"Captain Crunch"

Your correspondant wrestles a baby gator.

A gator ruminating in the cypress swamp.

If you work in the tourism business, chances are that from time to time, you enjoy some perks on the job.  If you work as a travel journalist, those times tend to come more frequently. This week on Alabama's Gulf Coast, I'm enjoying the perks in spades.

I arrived today at my accomodations for the weekend.  I'm being hosted by the Alabama Gulf Coast CVB and partners at Turquoise Place, a beautiful high-rise condo development right on the beach. This building was complteed just last year, and features modern decor and luxurious appointments.

I was shocked when, after checking in at the front desk, I walked into my "room" -- turns out I'm spending the next four days in a 2,300-square-foot, three-bedroom condominium, outfitted with a full kitchen, three and a half baths, and a beautiful balcony looking out over the sugary sands and emerald waters of the Gulf Coast. This is the smallest unit in the development, but it's bigger than my house, and around every turn, there's a surprise -- the gas range and massive side-by-side refrigerator in the kitchen, the multi-jet shower in the master bathroom, and the gas grill and full-sized hot tub on the balcony overlooking the ocean.

It's feels somehow shameful that I'll be enjoying such a big place all by myself this weekend -- a condo like this would be a perfect place for a big family or group of friends to enjoy some quality time together. But the feeling will pass. The appointments and decorations are luxurious, and I plan to take advantage of as many as I can.  All that stands in the way is the list of things I'm slated to do and see during my stay here.