The Road Goes On…

Category: Alabama

  • Southern US Trip Summary

    This morning at home we feel as though we are living between two worlds. Before we enter back into our everyday life with all its responsibilities we look back on six and a half weeks of excitement and adventure. We’re happy we did write the blog so that we don’t forget all the things we saw and experienced. It definitely is a trip to remember and does rival our Route 66 trip from two years ago.

    What worked well:

    WIND Mobile’s Unlimited US Roaming. We’ve been WIND Mobile customers for a number of years now and their price just can’t be beat. For $15 a month we had unlimited voice calling, texting and 1GB of data while in the US. This allowed us to keep in touch and look up things on the road.

    Good Sam Membership: This RV club membership cost $25 a year and give you 10% discount at member campsites.  It definitely paid for itself.

    America the Beautiful Pass: This $80/year pass gives you free entrance to US Parks and other recreation sites. It paid for itself as well.

    Garmin GPS: We love our Garmin GPS system. At the start of the trip we had the RV/Trucking dezl 760 model but it was stolen in Albuquerque so we bought a nuvi 2689LMT to replace it. These GPS units have campground locations pre-installed and provide lots of information on arrival times, traffic conditions, etc.

    Allstays Camp and RV App: We use this app on our iPads all the time to look for campgrounds. It shows the location of campgrounds and gives information about their rating, facilities and distance from your current location.

    NOAA Weather Pro App: This app for the iPad and iPhone shows a map with weather conditions. It also has the ability to send alerts to your phone when severe weather is nearby.

    Visitor Centres, Park Rangers and Bureau of Land Management offices: These are always a source of great information and have invaluable knowledge of local conditions and opportunities.

    Frugal RV Travel Guides: These guides have great route information as well as tips on inexpensive places to stay overnight.

    Here’s a map of the entire trip. This is an image grab from Google Maps as it wasn’t possible to use the entire GPS track on a live map, probably because of its size.

    SouthernUS

  • Grayton Beach, Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana

    Ok, time to explore the beach!!

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    Need we even say more?

    The waves and currents were very strong it was almost impossible to swim but we did go into the water and gave it an honest try and had lots of fun. A set of flags on the beach indicate the conditions. In our case, yellow (Medium Risk) and Purple (Dangerous Marine Wildlife) which the ranger said was jellyfish in our case. We didn’t have the misfortune to meet any.

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    The sand here is local and not shipped in from the Bahamas as we were told it was in Key West. The dunes serve a very important purpose to protect the land behind them from flooding and are therefore protected themselves from human footprints and the erosion caused by walking on them.

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    After breakfast we hopped on I-10 west and left Florida and entered Alabama. Here we had lunch at the De-Railed Diner, a railway/travel themed diner at a travel centre.

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    Continuing onwards, we entered Mississippi and then Louisiana and stopped at their visitor centre to pick up some tips on what to see during our stay.

    Our home for the night is the French Quarter RV Resort which located a short walk from the centre of the French Quarter in New Orleans!

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    We couldn’t have a better base for our stay.  Now we were ready to experience New Orleans on a Friday night! What an experience, see Bourbon Street for yourself.

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    The front desk staff suggested we head over to where the locals go, namely Frenchmen Street, and recommended we visit the Snug Harbor for a Jazz concert with the Ellis Marsalis Quintet.

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    At the table next to us was a family from St. Louis, Missouri and we shared travel adventures and got a lot of tips of what to see, eat and do while in New Orleans.

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    The concert was over at 9:30PM and we still hadn’t had any dinner, so rather than taking a taxi back to the campground, we decided to walk and look for something to eat. The streets were packed and alive with music and all kinds of interesting stores.

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    We ended up having a slice of pizza and a litre of water and limped home, tired but extremely happy about the day.