It's a Wednesday morning, and I'm shooting skeet with the Mississippi River levee as my backdrop. I told the folks at The Louis Hotel, where I'm staying in Wilson, that I'm a terrible shot. Still, they insisted that I participate. Even though I keep missing, the Benelli over-under shotgun I'm using has such a sweet feel that I'm enjoying myself.

This isn't your father's Mississippi County, once the largest cotton-producing county in the country, a place with thousands of sharecropper shacks lining highways and county roads. They chopped the cotton by hand each summer. They picked it by hand each fall. They went to town on Saturday to buy supplies and perhaps even see a movie if there were a few coins left over.

Wealthy visitors from across the region--what I like to call the Garden & Gun crowd after the Southern lifestyle magazine--show up in Wilson these days to eat, drink, shop and do things like visit the Wilson Field Club. There are even six holes of golf with another 18 still to come.

I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, checked into my room at The Louis and then walked across U.S. 61 to The Grange. The upscale establishment, which raises many of the fruits and vegetables it sells, serves breakfast six days a week, lunch six days a week, and dinner on Monday.

There are salads, sandwiches, homemade desserts and a daily selection of house-made ice cream. That's not to mention milkshake and sundae, wine, cocktail, coffee, and bottled water and juice menus.

There's even a dog's brunch item. For $8, you can order your pet scrambled eggs and bacon in a souvenir dog bowl. Like I said, this isn't your father's Mississippi County.

The chef here, who once worked at tony resorts such as Watercolor and Watersound along 30A on the Florida Panhandle, made a special moon pie for those who showed up to watch the solar eclipse in April.

We started with beignets with two sauces, followed by a selection of that day's ice cream. There are hot and cold specials at........

© El Dorado News Times