Day 20: Gulf Shores, AL

Stop 16 / States 7 & 8:  Gulf Shores, AL

Two more states that we haven't visited before, Mississippi and Alabama.  Good weather today (i.e., no rain but still hot and steamy) for our 185 mile trip to Gulf Shores.

First, we had to cross Lake Ponchartrain (this is one of the directions where you can see the far side - in many directions you can't):

Crossing the Mississippi Line:

Crossing the Alabama Line:

Most of todays trip was again across flat, wet jungle.  Again, we seemed to be on causeways much of the time and we never seemed to be far above the water table.  The Mississippi woods seemed to be loaded with wild Magnolias.  We never thought of them growing wild.  Once we were across Mobile Bay, we experienced an unfamiliar sensation - we were actually climbing up a grade.

When we were checking in, the ladies at the counter wanted to tell (and tell, and tell) us everything about the area.  We ended up doing quite a bit of sightseeing.  One of our more interesting stops was the Gulf State Park Fishing Pier which goes about 1/2 mile out into the Gulf.  We couldn't believe how white the sand was.

East toward Orange Beach:

West toward Gulf Shores:

East again from the end of the pier:

West again from the end of the pier:

 

Looking down from the pier, we saw large schools of rays swimming in the waves:



 

One fisherman had hooked a rather large shark:



 Sharks?  Rays?  Must be time to go swimming!  That's me heading for the waves:

 

Obligatory trailer shot (we really like this park):

 

 

-J-

Day 19: New Orleans, LA (cont.)

Still in New Orleans, LA

Yesterday, I described how we missed the Mississippi River when we crossed it at Baton Rouge.  Driving around New Orleans yesterday, we wanted to rectify that but found that levies and railroad tracks stymied our every effort.  Early this morning, we finally found our way to the River Walk along the Mississippi River.

Upriver toward the Crescent City Connection (formerly the Greater New Orleans Bridge):

Kristen on the River Walk (also looking upstream):

 

 Looking downriver at the Natchez:

After walking the River Walk, it was a short stroll to the French Market section of the French Quarter.

Carriages in front of Jackson Square:

St. Louis Cathedral through Jackson Square:

Having beignets at the Café du Monde was number 1 on Kristen's list of things that she wanted to do in New Orleans.

Café au lait and beignets:

More French Market:

A particularly nice porch in the French Quarter:

The view from our table at lunch:

My lunch (an oyster po-boy):

A side note:  Kristen happened to talk to the maintenance man at our RV park.  She asked about the pool that is on the park map but doesn't seem to be there.  Apparently, the park was under 4' of water during Katrina and the pool filled in.  They've never gotten around to digging the pool back out.

-J-

Day 18: New Orleans, LA

Stop 15:  New Orleans, LA

Today started out wet.  While we were eating breakfast, it started to thunder, lightning and pour.  We stayed in for a while, hoping to wait it out, but the storm showed no sign of abating.  Finally, I put on yesterday's dirty clothes and my Crocs and waded into the storm.  I got us hooked up in record time and stepped back into the trailer to dry off and put on some clean, dry clothes.

New Orleans is a 206 mile trip from Lake Charles and we outran the storm after about 50 miles.  The landscape today was mostly swamp and jungle.  No hills, the road skimmed along just above the level of the water.  Occasionally, the trees pulled back to show us something like this (Henderson Swamp):

There were several 20 mile stretches where the East and Westbound lanes were 2 long bridges over the water.  Once you entered one of those stretches, the was no exiting or turning around until you got to the end.

As we approached New Orleans, the road along the edge of Lake Ponchartrain wasn't much different.

The Magellan saga continues:  This morning, the Magellan refused to show us any kind of a map.  It showed the step by step instructions and showed a graphic representation of each transition point but that was it.  At around Lafayette, it sounded an alarm and warned me to slow down.  It is supposed to do this any time that I hit 5 MPH over the trailer speed limit but it hasn't done this since Williams, AZ on day 4.  To summarize,  we lost a function and we regained a function.

At Baton Rouge, we were about to approach a big bridge when 2 things happened.  First, Magellan let out a loud clang and announced "Fatal error!".  Kristen was just starting to panic when the phone rang (it was Briar).  About 10 minutes later, we suddenly looked at each other and said "You know, I'll bet that that was the Mississippi River".  With the Magellan acting up, we actually missed the Mississippi River.

Funny this is, since the reboot after the fatal error, the Magellan has been acting like it's old self.  Whatever happened in Williams that it didn't like has probably been working toward this failure the entire time.

We're going to be in New Orleans for 2 nights so, this afternoon, we did a little sightseeing but mostly we scouted out what we want to do tomorrow.  First, we walked around the Garden District:

 

Also in the Garden District, we walked through one of New Orleans' famous above ground cemeteries:

 

 

Next, we strolled around the French Quarter (crazy place!) and had some dinner:

We had dinner at a 225 year old Creole restaurant in the Quarter.  This is our fried alligator appetizer.  It was a little chewier than chicken nuggets but, otherwise, was pretty much the same.

Finally, our New Orleans campsite:

-J-

Day 17: Lake Charles, LA

Stop 14 / State 6:  Lake Charles, LA

Today, we finally made it to a state that we hadn't visited before.  As soon as we left Houston, we entered a very flat world of water and jungle.  First, Galveston Bay and then a multitude of bayous and swamps separated by what I could only call jungle.  Kristen took a couple of shots where the water came right up to the road.

Before we left Texas, we stopped at one of the nicest rest stops that we've seen:

That's our trailer out there:

entering Louisiana:

Crossing the bridge, coming down into Lake Charles:

After getting the trailer set up, we decided to see the area.  The next couple of pictures are at the lakefront.

There are many beautiful old houses in Lake Charles.  Most of these look like they might be B&B's.

While we were driving around, we also drove to Moss Bluff (about 2 miles away).  Crossed some amazing looking bayou's and rivers along the way (didn't get any photo ops however).

When we were checking into the RV park, Kristen asked the woman at the counter about a Cajun place that we had seen on the highway that advertised "the best crawfish in Louisiana".  Apparently, the place on the highway is the tourist restaurant.  The same owner has another, closer, place that was his original restaurant and is where all the locals go.  She recommended it highly so we ended up having dinner at Steamboat Bills.

The RV park lady had recommended the pistolette with crawfish etouffee so I started with one of those (very good!).  The waitress recommended that we order 5 Lbs. of crayfish for the 2 of us.  That seemed like a lot but we went ahead and ordered 5 Lbs..  Funny thing about crawfish, there's a very small amount of meat in each one.  Most of it goes into the bone pile.  Here's our pan of crawfish before we started:

 Here's our bone pile (Kristen was fighting off an overeager busboy while taking this so it came out a little blurry(:

Finally, Today's campsite:

-J-