The Road Goes On…

Category: Louisiana

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.

August 26, 2015
New Iberia, Louisiana to Houston, Texas

It was a hot and spicy morning…

This morning we visited the Tabasco pepper sauce factory on Avery Island, Louisiana. Tabasco brand sauce has been manufactured by the McIlhenny family since its invention by Edmund McIlhenny 1868.

To get on the island, one needs to pay a toll of $1.00. This is collected by a gentleman in a small toll booth with a wooden stick which he uses to collect the $1.00 from your vehicle and then to hand you your receipt.

We paid our toll but couldn’t get the van over the speed bumps because we bottomed-out. We left the van by the toll-house and a friendly staff drove us the 1/4 mile to the factory.

The tour consists of free-samples, a video, a walk by the production lines and some displays with further information.

Following the tour, we visited the Country Store, sampled everything there was to sample, and bought several varieties of sauces, dips and jellies.

Just outside of the store there is a small food wagon where we bought some Tabasco inspired lunch.

Soon we were on our way, heading for Texas. We had our usual afternoon torrential rain which made it almost impossible to drive. The good news is it rapidly brings the temperature down from 37C to 27C. The bad news is that the temperature goes right back up as soon as you drive past the downpour area.

We stopped at the Texas Welcome Centre and received plenty of tips of what to see and eat while in Texas. There is a BBQ route which we needs to be tested in detail. The other food that needs sampling is the Mexican variety and we started with that right away by visting Elena’s in Beaumont, Texas.

Martin, with his yellow shirt, fit right in with the decor.

Our home for the evening is the Palms RV Park in Houston which is near the Johnston Space Centre which we plan to visit tomorrow.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 27, 2015
New Orleans, Louisiana to New Iberia, Louisiana

Today was an especially exciting day for Ruth. She wanted so much to visit the plantations along the Great River Road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Ten plantations are in close proximity but we only had time to visit two of them. Prior to the civil war, more than half of America’s millionaires lived between New Orleans and Natchez, their fortunes tied to the soil of the Mississippi river.

The first plantation we visited was the Laura Plantation, named after Laura Locoul (1861-1963), the last decendant of the Duparc family to own this Creole plantation. The building looks modest compared to some other plantations which is typical for Creole families who saw their plantation as a business.

Their main home was in New Orleans. Inside, the rooms are fairly modest. It was built by slaves who learned to be carpenters using only wooden nails and bricks they made themselves.

Some of the slave houses are still on the property. Plantation kitchens were always outside of the main building because they had a tendancy to burn down. We were also able to see the retirement home of Laura’s grandmother, Elisabeth Duparc, who was known for standing on the balcony and pointing out all the mistakes that were being made.

We had a fabulous tour with Ethan, a trained actor, who showed lots of knowledge and enthusiasm.

At the gift store we purchased the memoirs of Laura, a Creole cookbook and a small bottle of rum made from local sugarcane.

The second plantation we visited is called Oak Alley plantation. It is known for its quarter mile alley lined with 28 three hundred year old oak trees. We had a fabulous lunch at the restaurant on the premises.

The majestic mansion is worth seeing both from the outside as well as the inside.

We especially liked the self-guided exhibit on slavery at the Oak Alley plantation. The guided tour of the interior of the house definitely wasn’t as good as the Laura tour.

A short video on sugar production promising to show both historical and current methods of sugar processing turned out to be not much more than a promotional film by the sugar producers extolling the virtues of sugar and seemed to encourage visitors to eat more cupcakes with lots of sugar icing.

We left the historic sites of the plantations and continued West to New Iberia where we are camping the the KOC Campground.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 26, 2015
New Orleans, Louisiana

After doing laundry while we wrote the last two days of blog entries, we headed out to explore more of the French Quarter and find some lunch.

We decided to go to a traditional Creole restaurant called Mr. B’s Bistro and had a fabulous lunch. Martin had a Warm Yellow Fin Tuna salad (highly recommended!) and Ruth had Pasta Jambalaya. For dessert we narrowed our choices down to four options but after a long discussion including the waiters opinion we settled on two – Hot Buttered Pecan Pie and Three Berry Cobbler. A totally satisfying dining experience!

Now it was time to walk and sweat off the calories!

The French Quarter looks quite different during the day and we enjoyed the galleries and antique stores.

One highlight was definitely the Bevolo Gas and Electric Light store and show-factory. We had seen a number of these gas lamps all over the French Quarter last night and now we got to see how they were each hand-made.

Time for something sweet. On our walk past the Cafe Du Monde where we only looked at their famous beignets, we stopped at a Creole praline manufacturing shop and purchased one to share.

It tasted a bit like fudge or maple sugar with pecans.

Next stop was the market where alligators and arthritis caught our eyes…

Totally exhausted and with many liquid calories dripping off of us we headed home and picked up a gallon of water along the way. Yesterday we had bought water from the same shop and paid $3.00 for a litre. Today we bought a 4 litre jug for $3.00. Go figure.

Pepsi had had her beauty rest in her air-conditioned van and couldn’t understand why we drank half a gallon of water and then needed a two hour siesta.

After it had cooled off a bit outside, we headed over to the pool for a swim which was cut short by a thunderstorm. We re-joined Pepsi in the van and provided some moral support in her hour of fear.

Tomorrow we plan to visit some plantations. Our campsite is right next to I-10 so we should have a quick get-away.

July 25, 2015
Grayton Beach, Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana

Ok, time to explore the beach!!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 24, 2015