Tropical Storm Debby actually started developing in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico a week or so ago. It just kind of wandered around the Gulf, moving a little bit north until it was a couple hundred miles west of the coast of Florida. It then stalled and gathered its skirts, becoming a tropical depression and then a tropical storm. The weather experts had no clue as to where the storm was going to head. On Saturday night, when we made the decision to stay put in Columbus for at least one more day, the probable storm track had Debby going pretty much straight west, not making landfall in the U.S., but causing some rain and flooding issues along the Gulf Coast, pretty much where we were headed. By Sunday morning the storm track had shifted 90 degrees and was now due north, making landfall just east of New Orleans on Thursday, the same day we were supposed to arrive in New Orleans.
About 5:00 we had cocktails and then we and the Babcocks drove into Columbus to try another of the local restaurants, Nancy’s Steakhouse. It is a very nice place, modern and clean looking. The hostess got us in and our waiter was right there. The service at the place is very good, our waiter was attentive and responsive during our entire meal. They have a very good menu and we started with two of their appetizers, the spicy fried crawfish tails and a dish they called a fondeaux, which was crawfish, mushrooms and shrimp sauteed in a cream sauce and finished with Italian cheese. Both were good, the fondeaux was especially good.
The Babcocks split a big 16oz T-bone and I had the T-bone for myself. Both steaks were very good quality and cooked just like each of us wanted. The only snag was I had to tell the waiter, a young guy, what “blue” meant with regard to steak - very rare. The salad bar was excellent and everything was moderately priced. It was an excellent dining experience and I can highly recommend Nancy’s Steakhouse if you find yourself in Columbus, Texas for some reason. It is right on the main street, just south of the I-10 and Texas 71 interchange. After dinner we went back to the park and watched TV the rest of the night.
Monday, June 25th, we checked the weather reports and decided to stay one more day. Debby was still kind of stuck, not moving much at all and still confusing the weather people, who were very uncertain still as to where it would eventually go. All of the rain and wind was on the east side of the storm and pounding Florida. The best guess now is that the storm will start to move to the east and northeast, mostly affecting Florida and missing New Orleans completely.
Since we were going to stay in Columbus another day we decided to go out and do some more geocaching. The four of us left the RV park about 10:00 and headed out to get some of the more far-flung caches. We ended up getting eight new caches with no DNFs, but we had to drive probably 80 miles to get the eight. Several of them were in very old cemeteries, which are really interesting places to visit. The last cache we found was close to the little town of Fayetteville, Texas, population 258. Since it is the county seat of Fayette County, they have a little courthouse in the town square and nearly all the businesses in town are on the four sides of the square. It is a very old looking town, almost to the point where it kind of looks like a movie set. It seemed like most of the businesses were closed, but we did find Orsak’s Café right on the town square. Not sure how you would run across this great place by accident, but we managed. It seemed like everyone in town was going into this little place on the corner, so we tried it. The food was wonderful. We only had burgers and a couple of us had chilli, but everything that we did have was great. The place is filled with pictures of people who live in the area and their families. A lot of restaurants hang pictures of famous people who visit, but this is the first I have seen that puts pictures of just folks on the walls, and the shelves, and everywhere else. Given the population I would guess a good percentage of the people in town have their pictures here. Great place to eat if you wander into Fayetteville, by accident or on purpose. After a great lunch we drove back to the RV park, just driving the country roads enjoying the scenery. When we got back to the park we just relaxed the rest of the evening. I did go out just after sunset to take down the outside screens and put away what little bit of stuff we put out. We have agreed that the weather forecast for Debby is such that we can cancel our temporary hold and continue our travels east tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 26th, we finally left Columbus, Texas and got back on Interstate 10, driving east 160 miles to Beaumont, Texas. We were two days late leaving, but it still looks like we will make it to New Orleans on time. We arrived at the Gulf Coast RV Resort in Beaumont about 1:30 after a fairly uneventful drive. We only stopped once for fuel and once for lunch on the trip. The resort was very nice, just off the interstate, and we would have liked to have been able to spend the extra day we originally planned, but you do what you got to do. We got parked and set up, but did the bare minimum we needed for a one night stay. I didn’t even unhook the car since we didn’t plan on going anywhere and they gave us a pull through site.
Ray and I did go over to the swimming pool, which was right across the road from our sites, just because we had nothing else to do. The air temperature was in the high nineties and the water was in the low nineties. It was really only refreshing for the first ten seconds after you got in, then it was like a bath. We stayed at the pool, chatting with some people, for about a half hour before heading back to the coach. We didn’t do anything other than watch TV and relax the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Wednesday, June 27th, we left Beaumont early, about 8:30, got back on I-10 and started east again, this time towards Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, another 150 miles or so. We crossed the state line about 45 minutes after leaving the RV park at Texas milepost 880. When you take into consideration our little detour off I-10 down to Corpus Christi, we drove well over 1,100 miles through Texas! Wow! Once we got into Louisiana we noticed that the quality of the roads kind of went in the dumper. The roads we ran along today would make a Californian proud.
We arrived in Breaux Bridge, a small town just east of Fayetteville, Louisiana, about 11:30 and checked into Poche’s Fish N Camp RV park. We had been told about Poche’s by our friends Peggy and Vernon Bullock, who had stayed here last year when they were in the south. They said they had a great time. It is also a Passport America park, which means we got to stay for half price, which turned out to be $16 for the night for a full hookup site. The park is very interesting in that the sites are all spaced out around a couple of large, private fishing lakes. Too bad our schedule will only allow for one day here, I would have liked to try my hand at some bass or catfish.
We got our site, with the Babcocks pulling in right next to us, got the utilities hooked up, the slides out and the coach leveled. As soon as we got that minimal work done and made sure the A/Cs were running, we unhooked our car and the four of us headed out of the park to go visit the Tabasco hot sauce plant. One of the main things on my list of things to do here in this part of Louisiana was to visit the Tabasco plant, which is about 40 miles south of Fayetteville near the town of New Iberia, Louisiana.
Our first stop after leaving the park was to stop at a little café in Breaux Bridge called Le Café. The place was recommended by the lady at the RV park who checked us in. All four of us had shrimp po boys, and they were wonderful. The shrimp and the sauce was just a little spicy and the onion rings were great too. The restaurant was really not much more than a small shack and probably only seated 20, but the food was outstanding.
After lunch we drove the 40 miles to New Iberia on some of the back roads of Louisiana through several very quaint little towns. We were surprised to see a lot of very nice, very large homes along the state highways in this area. Most were on multi-acre lots with huge front yards. We drove by one that had a small two seat helicopter parked on the front lawn, not 100 yards from the front door. We got to New Iberia about 1:30 and followed the signs to Avery Island, the private island that belongs to the McIlhenny Company and is where the primary distilling and bottling plant for Tabasco pepper sauce is located.Tabasco pepper sauce was first produced in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny, who had moved to Louisiana from Maryland around 1840. When Edmund died in 1890, his eldest son, John Avery McIlhenny, took over and expanded and modernized the business. John left in 1898 to fight in the Spanish-American war, so his brother Edward took over the company and ran it until his death in 1949. The current CEO is Paul McIlhenny, the sixth of the McIlhenny men to run the business.
We took the factory tour, which really didn’t amount to too much. The only thing that you saw was a portion of the bottling facility. They had a 20 minute video that showed the process of making the sauce, but didn’t show you any of the pepper fields or the fermenting barrels. The Capsicum peppers that are used to make Tabasco are a specific variety and until recently they were all grown on Avery Island. Today most of the peppers are grown in Central and South America where more predictable weather and readily available farmland allow a larger year-round supply. However, all of the seed for production world-wide come from the remaining fields on Avery Island. After they are harvested the peppers are ground into a mash, placed in white oak barrels and stored for fermenting and aging in a warehouse on the island. After aging, the mash is strained to remove skins and seeds, mixed with vinegar and put in large vats to be stirred for a month. Only then is it bottled as finished sauce.
After we finished the factory tour we went into the company store, which is the real reason they draw you to Avery Island. Of course I bought a tee shirt, but other than that we just looked around for a while. Once we finished at the plant we drove back north to Breaux Bridge, stopped at Walmart for a bit, and then went back home. We got together with the Babcocks for cocktails and some pizza that we bought a Walmart. About 8:00 we were back in our own coaches for the rest of the night.
Thursday, June 28th, we left Poche’s around 9:30 for the next leg of our journey, another 150 miles east on I-10 to New Orleans, Louisiana. We arrived in New Orleans about 1:30 after one stop for fuel and lunch on the way. We also had to decompress a little from the part of the trip that took us through Baton Rouge. There was major construction going on with the freeway through that area and we had about 40 miles of really hairy driving. Narrow lanes, huge numbers of trucks and really bad drivers. We both made it without problems, but it was stressful.
We arrived at the Pontchartrain Landing RV Resort, got registered and set up in our sites fairly quickly. The weather is still hot and sticky, but not quite as bad as the last couple stops. This is a very nice RV park which is in New Orleans proper, although on the north side of town close to Lake Pontchartrain. Our sites are on the water of one of the canals or waterways that connect the lake on the north to the Mississippi River on the south end of town. We are only about seven miles from downtown and the French Quarter area. We decided to just stay in for the rest of today, so Ray BBQed some chicken and we had cocktails and dinner with the Babcocks before settling in for the night.
Friday, June 29th, it was time to see New Orleans and party. We left the coach around 10:30 and the four of us drove down to the French Quarter. The RV park has a shuttle service, but they have very limited trips and the timing didn’t fit with our scheduled bus tour and the need for the Babcocks to come back to the coach in the early afternoon to walk their dog. We found a parking lot near Jackson Square, the south center part of the Quarter and our first stop was one of the carriage rides that start at the Square. The four of us took a 30 minute tour around the French Quarter and some of the surrounding area, which was a lot of fun, although with the canopy over the top of the carriage the views were not the best.
The tour was about two and a half hours and went all over the city. The bus driver, who has lived in New Orleans for about 20 years and was very knowledgeable, gave us a running commentary on the neighborhoods. The tour we were on included a tour of areas that were severely affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, including the infamous Lower Ninth Ward, where the most severe flooding was. It was not a bleak as I had thought it would be, there was a lot of rebuilding that has gone on, but it was still pretty bad in some areas. There were hundreds of abandoned homes, clearly showing the effects of fifteen feet of water, hundreds of vacant lots were homes have been demolished, but also a lot of new construction. The driver pointed out some of the canals, levees and flood walls that failed and caused the flooding. We also got to see Fats Domino’s home and recording studio, which was right in the middle of the Ninth Ward.
We stopped at one of the famous New Orleans city cemeteries with all the large, ornate above ground crypts and tombs. He told us a lot about the history of the cemeteries, why they do above ground internment and how sometimes tombs are sold after all of a family dies off and no one is around to take care of the tomb anymore. The original families remains are left in the tomb, but their family name is taken off the front and moved to the side of tomb. The new “owners” name is put on the front and their family members are then interred in the tomb also. He said there is quite a market in cemetery real estate. We got to walk around the cemetery for a while.He also took us through some of the newer neighborhoods on the north side of town where the upper middle class live. They also had some flood damage from Katrina, but these areas rebuilt much quicker and it is hard to see any evidence of the storm seven years later. The final part of the tour took us through the Uptown and Garden districts where the well to do built mansions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are some very nice homes in this area and a multitude of architectural styles. The driver was very good about identifying the various styles. These are the neighborhoods where the streetcars still run. In the early 1900's there were 16 streetcar lines in New Orleans, now there is only one. The driver told us that one of the lines ran from downtown to Desire Street and was the inspiration for A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, who was living in New Orleans at the time he wrote the play.
After the bus tour we walked back up to Bourbon Street and walked around for another hour or so. Things were now kind of jumping as there were a lot more people, a lot drunker people, and a lot of pretty interesting street entertainers. Late in the afternoon the police close off several of the main streets in the Quarter, including Bourbon, to vehicle traffic, so they become pedestrian malls. Three of us picked up a Hurricane, a fruity rum drink that New Orleans is famous for, and sipped them while walking about. You can drink on the street as long as it’s in a plastic container. About 6:30 we stopped for dinner at another Bourbon Street restaurant called Pat O’Brien’s. This place has been in business in the Quarter since 1933 and does a really good business. Again, the food was excellent. I had crawfish etoufee, Jackie and Suzie had shrimp, and Ray got a sampler platter of Creole food. Jackie and Ray also shared a plate of alligator. Yum! After dinner we spent another hour enjoying the sights and sounds of Bourbon Street, before finally heading back to the coaches about 9:00. We had a great day, very busy but very fun.Saturday, June 30th, the four of us left the RV park about 11:30 for another day of fun in New Orleans. We parked at the south end of the French Quarter, next to what used to be the Jackson Brewery and is now a shopping mall and hotel. We stopped for lunch at a café very close to where we parked called the New Orleans Seafood Company. Lunch was very good, I had a shrimp po boy and Jackie had an appetizer sampler with a couple of different Creole and Cajon dishes. After lunch we walked around some of the shops along Peters Street, which is the last street south of the Quarter before the Mississippi River. We also did one geocache because we had to have one for this date.
The geocache was a virtual cache, meaning no actual container or log, one just has to find something, in this case a statue, and then email the cache owner with the answers to some questions posed in the cache description. In this case the stature was of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, an explorer with the French Mississippi Company who founded New Orleans in 1717. The town was under French control until the Treaty of Paris in 1763 when it was ceded to the Spanish government. Spain controlled the city until 1801 when Spain gave it back to the French, only to have them sell it to the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This rich history with dissimilar cultures is why the city is so architecturally and culturally interesting. By the way, the current population of New Orleans is about 340,000. Prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 the population was over 450,000. In 2006, the year after the storm it was estimated at 270,000.
At 2:00 we walked over to the river to take a two hour riverboat cruise on the Mississippi on the Stern Wheeler Natchez. We learned that the current Natchez, a modern steel hulled boat built in 1975, is the ninth paddle wheeler to have that name. They also told us that seven of the previous eight were lost to boiler explosions and the other to a fire. Although the current boat has a steel hull and superstructure, it is still steam operated and actually driven by the paddle, not a propeller. The trip was OK and probably worth the $20, but it only went about twenty miles downstream, then turned around went back. There really wasn’t a whole lot of interesting stuff to look at, mostly old dilapidated docks and wharfs and a whole lot of barges parked along the banks. We stayed inside the cabin, sipping drinks and watching the river roll by.After our little boat ride we drove back to the RV park so Ray could walk the dog and we spent an hour or so resting. About 6:00 we drove to the New Orleans Elks Lodge, which was actually in the community of Metairie, on the north end of town about six miles west of the RV park. This is one of the older Elks Lodges still in existence and is Lodge 30, charted in 1884. Like many older lodges, they used to have a very large, ornate building right downtown, however declining membership and financial problems caused them to move to the suburbs some thirty years ago. There is still a small street near downtown called Elk Place on which the old lodge building once stood.
When we arrived at the lodge we were shocked to find the parking lot full. We thought there was some big lodge function going on, but it turned out there was a private party in their hall. There were only about six people in the actual Lodge clubroom, however, they were very friendly and nice. One of the officers gave us a tour of the facility, which includes a swimming pool for members and some RV hookups. They gave us lodge pins and also bought our first round of drinks. We ended up spending about an hour there talking to the folks. The lodge only has about 285 members now.
After visiting the Elks we went to a nearby restaurant called Crazy Johnnies, which was recommended by a couple of the people in the lodge. It was a small, simple steakhouse in a commercial area of town that is known for their prime rib. Ray, Jackie and I all had the prime rib and it was some of the best I have had. The food was reasonably priced, excellent quality and the service was good. You might have a problem finding the place at 18th and Arnoult, but it will be worth the search. After dinner we drove back home, getting in about 9:00 after another full day.
Sunday, July 1st, Happy Second Half of the Year! Once again the four of us left the RV park about noon and drove to downtown New Orleans. The primary target for today’s activities was to be shopping, especially at the French Market, which is New Orleans’ open air market that runs along about three blocks of the river to the south of the French Quarter. It took us a while, being Sunday, to find a place to park, but we finally got an open spot not too far from Café Du Monde, which is on one end of the area we wanted to wander.
Café Du Monde is probably the best known coffee house in New Orleans and one of the oldest. The place was first opened in 1862 and is best known for it’s chicory coffee and beignets, square donuts covered in powdered sugar. Beignets and chicory coffee have become symbolic of New Orleans, although Café Du Monde didn’t invent either, a visit to the place has become one of the “must do’s” when coming to NOLA. It has also been a location in a lot of movies filmed in New Orleans. The restaurant has only patio seating, some under cover some not, with little French Sidewalk Café looking white wire tables and chairs. The menu only has a couple varieties of coffee and beignets, so ordering is easy. When we drove past the place on the way to parking there was a long line waiting for a table, but after we got parked and walked back we were able to go right in.First off, the place is filthy. We understand that there is seating for a couple hundred people, it is very tight spacing, and they serve food covered with powdered sugar, so a dirty floor is probably expected. However, every empty table was still covered with dirty dishes. They don’t seem to have a bussing staff so the wait staff has to clean tables too and their priority is serving, not cleaning. We cleaned off our own table by moving all the stuff to an adjacent empty table. We all had Café Au Lait, half coffee, half milk, and beignets. You get three beignets in an order so we each got 1.5 sugar donuts and a cup of coffee. After ten minutes we were done and moving on down the street having done the Café Du Monde thing.
At one point during our shopping tour the skies opened up and we had about a half hour of thunder, lightening and a hard rain. It cooled things off for a while, but when the sun came out in full an hour later, it was really hot and humid. About 5:00 we decided we had enough walking and shopping and we went back to the car and back to the RV park. By the time we got home everyone had decided we didn’t even want to go out again, so we just stayed in the rest of the night.
Monday, July 2nd, we left the coach after lunch with the Babcocks to go out and do some chores. Our first stop was Supercuts so Jackie could get a haircut. We then moved on to a Jo Ann’s Fabrics so the girls could get some hobby supplies. Both Jackie and Suzie like to “bling” up shirts and hats and the like and they needed some stuff. We also wanted to get some flannel-like fabric to make covers for our driver and passenger seats in the coach. They are leather, or something like leather, and get really sticky in hot, humid weather. Suzie made some for their coach and is going to show Jackie how to make some for ours.
After Jo Ann’s we did a trip to the local Sam’s Club. We wanted to get a few more bottles of vodka since Louisiana seems to have liquor laws similar to the states in the west, meaning that spirits can be sold in most any store, including grocery stores and places like Sam’s Club. This almost always means lower prices because of the increased competition. In another week we move into Mississippi and Tennessee for a month or so and I don’t think they are so liberal. After Sam’s we headed back to the RV park for a rest.
About 6:00 we left again and the four of us went to a local restaurant called Drago’s. It was only about six miles from the RV park and was not in downtown or the French Quarter. A friend of ours from Indio, Joe Daily, had noticed on Facebook that we were in New Orleans and he posted that we should not miss Drago’s. We noticed that the place had great reviews online so we decided to try it. It was at the same intersection as Crazy Johnnies, the restaurant we went to on Saturday, right across the street, so we had no trouble finding it.
We were seated right away and the food was fabulous, probably the best we have had in New Orleans. Thank you Joe Daily! We ordered the charbroiled oysters for an appetizer because most of the online reviews raved about them. I don’t eat oysters, but Jackie, Ray and Suzie loved them. I also ordered another seafood fondu dish, shrimp, mushrooms, and cheese with bread to dip, and it was delicious also. I ended up ordering the catch of the day, which was a blackened Redfish and it was cooked to perfection. It was also a good portion, unlike what you get at some restaurants on the special menu. Everyone else had whole lobsters and everyone loved them. After dinner we went back to the RV park and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Tuesday, July 3rd, we packed up and left the RV park in New Orleans about 10:00 and headed to our next destination, which was only about 60 miles north on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. We arrived in Abita Springs, Louisiana, at the Abita Springs RV Resort about 11:30. Ray and Suzie were right behind us. This park is a private, membership park which used to belong to the Western Horizons group but was sold several years ago to Ocean Canyons, another private membership group. They still retained an affiliation with Western Horizons however, which allows us to use it as if was a WHR park. This makes it very inexpensive to stay here. The bad news was that since it was a holiday week/weekend, July 4th is tomorrow, the place was very full and they understandably gave their own members priority over the spots. They didn’t have any 50 amp or sewer sites available. The desk clerk said that some might come available by Saturday, so we only committed to four days when we checked in. We were originally going to stay here for seven days. We left it open that we might stay the other three days if something better opened up in the park later in the week.
We were most concerned about the 30 amp service since it was so hot. We can only run one of the two roof air conditioners on 30 amps and have to watch other uses, like the water heater and microwave, very closely too. None the less, we did get some nice sites with partial shade overlooking the large lake they have on the property. It is a very pretty park and there are dozens of ducks and geese walking around all over the park. We were able to get settled into our spot quickly and I even got our 4th of July decorations out and up on the front of the coach. We didn’t go anywhere for the rest of the day, just stayed around the coach and relaxed. We had cocktails with the Babcocks and then went back to our coach for dinner and spent the rest of the night watching TV.Wednesday, July 4th, Happy Birthday America! Around noon we walked over to the park’s recreation area where they were having free lunch for people staying at the park. We each got a cheeseburger and a hot dog, along with some chips and watermelon, all for free. We ate inside since it was pretty hot and humid out on the patio by the pool. After lunch the four of us got into our car and just took a site-seeing drive around the general area. We ended up driving almost 100 miles through a number of the small towns in this part of Louisiana, which they call the North Shore area. One of the larger towns was named Bogalusa and it was really odd because later on in the evening we were watching TV and learned that today was also Bogalusa’s 98th birthday and that they had parades and all kinds of things going on. We hadn’t seen any of that. One thing we did see when we drove through town was a town cop standing in the middle of the road, stopping traffic. I stopped, rolled down the window and he looked in, said, “OK, you’ve got your seatbelts on, go ahead.” It was just a safety check for seat belt use. He had his ticket book in his hand, so no doubt I would have gotten a ticket had we not been buckled in.
We also went through some very heavy thunderstorms while we were touring. None of them lasted more than a few minutes, but there were a couple times when the rain was very heavy. At least it knocked some of the dirt off the car. When we finally got back to Covington, the larger town right next door to Abita Springs, we made a stop at the Best Buy store so the Babcocks could look for a GPS for their geocaching. They are really hooked now and want a GPS receiver of their very own. After that we went back to the RV park. We got together for cocktails at 5:00 and then Ray brought over some big tamales they had in their freezer and we had some very good tamales for dinner, along with chips and salsa. After dinner they left and we spent the rest of the evening with the TV.
Thursday, July 5th, the four of us headed out about 10:00 for some geocaching in the Abita Springs area. The caches were kind of far flung, and some were hard to find, so we only ended up with seven new finds, and two DNFs, after a couple of hours of searching. We then stopped at a local Waffle House for lunch before heading into Covington to do some shopping. Our first stop was a large sporting goods store called Academy Sports. The Babcocks were able to find a nice Garmin handheld GPS there that they liked and that was ready for paperless geocaching. After they bought the GPS we made several other stops, including a Hobby Lobby, a Kohls and finally the local Walmart. We finally made it home by 5:00, had a quick cocktail and then the four of us left again for dinner at a local café.
We had been told about the Camellia Café when we checked into the RV park on Tuesday. It seems that the café has a special every Thursday night from 4 to 9 where every entree is 55% off for anyone over 55. We had made reservations for 6:00 tonight to take advantage of the deal. The café turned out to be a very nice little place with great service, a wonderful menu and excellent food. Jackie had an eggplant dish, I had a full rack of ribs, Ray had a seafood platter and Suzie had chicken. Suzie said the chicken was a little overcooked and dry, but everyone else thought their food was outstanding. Just because the entrees were more than half price didn’t mean they cut back on the amounts of food. We all ended up taking home leftovers. I ate half of my rack of ribs and took the other half home for lunch. Ray took more home than he ate, and he ate a lot of seafood. Our bill, even with drinks, was $45 for Jackie and I. Before the discount it was over $60. Quite a bargain! After dinner we dropped the Babcocks off at their coach and went back to ours for the rest of the night.
Friday, July 6th, we decided we needed a “down” day so we made no plans for today. I caught up on some paperwork, relaxed and had my leftover ribs for lunch. After lunch Jackie and I took some of our laundry to the facility here at the park and did a couple of loads. Around 1:30 or so a series of thunderstorms started to roll through our area and there were several times when the rain was coming down as hard as I have ever seen. The weather report said that in our area it was at the rate of two to three inches per hour. Fortunately, we are at the edge of a large lake, so we didn’t have any flooding - all the water ran into the lake, which had plenty of leeway. Also Fortunately, there was no wind or hail, only lots of rain, thunder and lightening. One lightening bolt actually hit in the park, a few hundreds feet behind us. Oddly, we never lost power, even after the lightening strike, which Ray said he heard had hit a trailer in the park. We were really pleased that the coach remained watertight. No apparent leaks anywhere. If we can get through that kind of rain with no drips I think we are pretty safe to think we will stay dry in most anything.
About 5:00 Ray and Suzie came over for cocktails and later we had dinner together at our coach. Jackie had the crock pot going all day with a bunch of country ribs cooked Asian style. Served over rice, it was very good. We chatted for a while after dinner and then the Babcocks left and we watched TV the rest of the night. A very nice, relaxing day, except for the periods of rain.
We were ushered into the tasting room where we were able to spend about 20 minutes sampling some of the dozen or so varieties of beer they make. We then got to see a ten minute video of the brewing process before they closed the taps and took us into the brew house. The entire tour had two stops, the mash and fermentation room and the aging room. About the only thing you see are a couple dozen large, stainless steel vats and lots of hoses and pipes. Then you go back into the tasting room for another 15 minutes of beer drinking. We all decided that the “tour” is only an excuse to legally let the company give away free beer to potential new customers. Not that we complained, mind you. They actually had some pretty good brews, although I generally don’t care for most designer beers because they are too bitter or hoppy tasting. After the beer tasting we stopped back at the Camille Café, where we had dinner the other night, for lunch. We had noticed that they advertised a Saturday special where you could get a half pound burger and a 16 oz beer for $5 and we figured we would all get burgers. The special was real, but none of us got the burgers. They have too much other stuff on the menu. Ray and I split a full muffuletta sandwich, the Louisiana version of an Italian sub. I thought that when we leave here and go to Mississippi next week we may not see these again and they are very tasty. As with dinner, the service was great, the prices reasonable and the food outstanding.
After lunch we drove back into nearby Covington for some more shopping. We had to back to Kohl’s so Suzie could return some stuff that didn’t fit, and then we stopped at Target also. After shopping we went back to the RV park for a quick stop to let Ray walk the dog, then we got back into the car and drove to Slidell, Louisiana, a fairly large town about 20 miles east of Abita Springs. We were going to Slidell because it was the only place close by, besides New Orleans, with an Elks Lodge and the lodge is only open on the weekends.
We got to the Slidell Elks about 5:00 and found about a half dozen people in the bar. There were a lot of people out back in the picnic area, but it was a private party using the lodge facilities. We were greeted by both the Exalted Ruler and Lodge Secretary, and the Secretary took us on a tour of the lodge. They have a large building on a huge piece of land. They are a small lodge, less than 300 members, which is why they are not open more often. We had a cocktail and got a lodge pin for our banner before leaving and heading back towards Abita Springs.On the way back to the RV park I took the smaller, back roads route rather than the freeway and we were able to get three geocache finds on the way home. We hadn’t expected to cache today, but the caches were on the way and the weather was really nice today, so why not? The weather forecast was the same as yesterday, 30% chance of thunderstorms, but today they weren’t around where we were. We got back to the coach close to 7:00 and we just went to our own coaches and relaxed the rest of the night.
Sunday, July 8th, although the weather was nice yesterday, about sundown it turned nasty again. We had thunderstorms rolling through the area about every three hours all night long. We kept being awakened by rolling thunder and the flashes of lightening. Smokey spent a good part of the night lying between us in the bed. When we woke up the sky was very overcast and the weather said more storms were in the offering.
We decided that this would be a good day of rest, so we told the Babcocks we were just going to stay in for the day and relax. They agreed that was a good idea and did so also. I did do a couple small maintenance chores in between rain showers, but mostly I just relaxed and played games. The good side of the overcast sky all day is that the temperatures were much lower, only in the 80's, although it was still humid as hell.
Monday, July 9th, our last full day in Louisiana. We needed to take a drive back to Slidell, the larger town to the east of Abita Springs, because we needed to visit a Triple A office to pick up some maps and tour books for the next few states on our travel itinerary. We left the coach after lunch and took the drive to Slidell. Ray was today’s driver, so I got to check out the scenery some while we traveled. We found the Triple A office and next door was a pawn shop. Ray and I went into the Triple A to get the maps and books and the girls went into the pawn shop. Jackie happened to find a big digital picture frame for only $15. The smaller one we had bought at a pawn shop a couple years ago for $10 finally quit working after two years of continuous use. We didn’t have anything else to do in Slidell, so we got back on the freeway and drove back to Covington, just the other side Abita Springs, and back to the Academy Sports store where Ray and Suzie had bought their GPS. Our weather alert radio seems to have quit after seven years and I remembered seeing the radios at the Academy Sports store when we were there. I went in, bought and bought the radio while the girls were next door shopping at Hobby Lobby.
After our shopping was done we took a drive to yet another nearby city, Mandeville. Mandeville is right on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and is the northern terminus of the Pontchartrain Causeway, the highway that runs across the middle of the lake from New Orleans to Mandeville. The causeway, which is actually two separate, parallel two lane bridges, is just under 24 miles long and is the longest continuous bridge over water in the world. It is a toll road, but is used extensively by people who live in the North shore area, the north side of the lake, but work in New Orleans on the south shore. When there are strong storms over the lake in the area of the causeway it is closed to traffic until the storms clear.We drove around Mandeville for a while, admiring some of the very nice homes that have been built along the lakeshore. We then decided to have dinner at a local BBQ place called Voodoo BBQ and Grill. It was the type of place where you ordered at the counter, but then they brought the food to your table. I had a plate with both pulled pork and beef brisket and it was wonderful. The food was reasonably priced and very good. The only complaint was from Ray and Jackie, who had the jerked chicken on their combos and they both said it was a little dry. They had several choices of sauce and we tried all of them. It was a very nice dinner experience and Ray had been wanting to try Louisiana BBQ, so now he got the chance. After dinner we drove home and just relaxed the rest of the night.
Tuesday, July 10th, time to leave Louisiana and get on to our next stop, Natchez, Mississippi, about 155 mile northwest of Abita Springs. Of course, about the time we pulled out of the park to dump our tanks the rain started. We had full tanks because we didn’t have sewer hookups at our sites here in Abita Springs. We got the tanks dumped and got soaked in the process by the rain, but by 10:30 we were on the road, in the rain, headed for Mississippi.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get far before trouble hit us, or more correctly we hit trouble. About three miles from the RV park, just coming into Abita Springs we went under one of the many Live Oak trees that are in this part of the country, and hit a low hanging limb with the satellite dome on the top front of the coach. The dome itself is pretty flimsy plastic and it shattered. There were big holes and cracks in the entire dome. I pulled off the road when I could and went up on the roof to make sure there was no structural damage to the coach. It was kind of scary on the wet roof, 12 feet off the ground, in the rain, but I needed to know if anything really serious happened. It did not appear that the limb itself hit any of the mechanical parts of the satellite dish inside the dome and there did not appear to be any other damage to the motorhome. My big worry know was that the water would get inside the dome and damage the electronics. I had no way to cover it however, so we just had to take the chance and continue on.
We stopped after about 20 miles to top off the fuel tanks on the coach and when we got ready to leave our steps would not retract. They are electric and automatic, supposed to retract as soon as the ignition switch is on and the door is closed. They would not come in at all and were sticking out about a foot from the side of the coach. We have had this problem before when traveling in the rain, but in the past opening and closing the door a few times would get them to finally retract. Something in the mechanism was getting wet and causing the system not to work. Once the steps dry out they work fine. I decided to just go on and try to make sure I stayed clear an extra little distance on the passenger side when I approached something on the road like a bridge or railing.
However, after about 50 miles we came to a construction area and I was really concerned that the lanes would be so narrow that I might bump the step into something and really damage it. I pulled over to the side of the road and, in the rain of course, spent 15 minutes on the wet ground under the front of the coach disconnecting the actuator from the steps and wiring them up with a piece of wire to keep them retracted. Once that was done we continued on - in the rain.
We finally got Natchez about 2:30 and found our reserved spots in the Natchez State Park campground. This park is part of the Mississippi State Park system and is located about 6 miles north of the City of Natchez. Both we and the Babcocks were able to get into our spots easily and get the utilities hooked up - in the rain - and the basic setup done on the coach so we could relax. Fortunately, we have always carried a spare satellite dish and tripod that we can set up outside when we are somewhere with a tree or something blocking the roof dome antenna. This time the roof dome was broke, but we had our dish and I got the TVs working.After an hour or so the rain stopped so I was able to go up on the roof and try to give the antenna up there some first aid. I took the busted plastic dome off and checked out the actual antenna, which again did not look like it had been struck by the limb. There was a lot of water in the bottom of the dome container, but all of the electronics and motors are elevated about an inch and did not appear to be soaked. I tried to dry out the inside of the dome as best I could with some towels and then covered the whole thing up with an oilskin table cloth to try and keep any additional water from getting into the dome. I hope we have a sunny day soon so I can dry the works out good and then turn it on to see if it still works. It will be a lot less expensive to just replace the plastic cover than it will be to replace the entire antenna. Fingers, toes and eyes crossed for luck!
Once I got all this done I was whipped and on my third dry shirt of the day. We had cocktails with the Babcocks, but dinner on our own in the coach and we just relaxed, calmed down and watched TV the rest of the night.
Our arrival here in Natchez, Mississippi makes a good stopping point for this chapter. Here in Natchez we will begin our journey along the 444 mile Natchez Trace National Parkway, which runs from Natchez to Nashville, Tennessee. We will publish again in a couple weeks. Until the next time, don’t let the little things in life get you down. Today was a rough day, but in the long run, just minor bumps in the road of life. Keep smiling! See ya later.
