Visiting Laurel, Mississippi

One of the places I have been looking forward to visiting is Laurel, the home town of Ben and Erin Napier who are television hosts of the show Home Town. The Napiers have made it their mission to support and help improve their town, having renovated over 70 homes in the area. Here’s the town a few years ago,

and today, thriving.

We started our visit to Laurel by stopping into Peddlers JUNKtion, a 50 dealer antiques mall where we had fun poking around.

I found a lovely Yellow Ware bowl that I had to have, so that was fun.

Next, we went to the Scotsman General Store (owned by the Napiers)…

…and while we didn’t purchase anything there, we were able to look through a large window to see Ben’s workshop where his shop scenes are filmed.

And at the end of the building is the iconic outside view of his shop.

We then drove over to the Scotsman Mercantile, which was the first store that the Napier’s owned.

I was looking for an oversized mug to purchase, but I still couldn’t find one, so we went to the town’s thrift shop, called NUTS (Neat Used Things for Sale.) There I found a mug that looked brand new, that had the message “Go Dawgs!” on it.

As the salesperson was wrapping it up for me I asked her who the Dawgs were. She looked at me a little funny and said, “MSU….you know, football?” So now I know. 

We drove around town a bit more and I recognized several of the homes from the TV show. Pretty cool. 

As we sat outside later, back at the campsite, I was struck by how perfect the evening was. There was no sound of traffic, other campers were far away and a duck was calling from across the water. Bliss.

Tomorrow we head for a week in Gautier, MS.