The Road Goes On…

Category: 2015 Southern US

Carlsbad, New Mexico

Today was learning day. First we went on an educational tour at the Living Desert Zoo and Garden and familiarized ourselves with the local plants and animals.

We had seen quite a bit of the vegetation already but knew most of the animals only by name, and for some of them, this was a good thing. We aren’t particularly eager to see mountain lions, bobcats, rattlesnakes up close and personal in the wild.

The cutest animals were definitely the prairie dogs – curious and affectionate.

Once back in our air-conditioned van, we joined Pepsi for rice salad lunch and lots of water before we began our second learning experience at the Carlsbad Caverns.

We very much enjoyed the drive up into the Guadalupe Mountains. The cavern is located at 3599 feet above sea level. Pepsi spent a relatively quiet time at the kennel provided at the information centre and we decided to hike the Natural Entrance into the cavern, walking down 800 feet over the course of a mile.

A walk that should have taken 1.5 hours, took us quite a bit longer because at every turn there was a new amazing view that just needed to be photographed.

Once down 800 feet, there is the Big Room which is a magical place with a feast for the eyes.

We spent quite a lot of time there taking pictures and left only because we were totally exhausted and had to pick up Pepsi before the kennel closed.

The evening program was still to follow. The caverns are home to between 24,000 and 1.5 million bats (depending on the year and season) and they go hunting each night. The National Park Service has a free evening bat watching program where a ranger gives a half-hour interactive presentation about myths and truths about bats and then the audience gets to watch, in silence, as the bats exit the cavern and fly over their heads. Cameras, alas, were not permitted.

Totally beat, we drove back to our campground and arrived at 10PM.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 31, 2015
Junction, Texas to Carlsbad, New Mexico

Today was supposed to be a driving day. Would we make it to New Mexico?

We woke up to the squawking of geese swimming down our river. It really was a beautiful campground and we were sad we didn’t have a chance to use the smoker that was provided at each site.

I-10 was not as boring as we had thought. It showed us the changing landscape from ranches to desert. Seeing this, Martin was adamant that it was time for Mexican food again. According to the exit sign at Ozona, there was a Mexican restaurant to be visited. We drove through Ozona, but weren’t able to find the advertised Mexican restaurant and were about to head back to I-10 when we spotted a bright blue canopy with a number of young women selling food to a long lineup of people. The sign said “Taquitos” and we immediately stopped and lined up and waited for original home cooked Mexican food, in support of a youth group trip to San Antonio.

After leaving Ozona, we entered an area of Texas that has a lot of oil and gas development. The other drivers drove fast and often aggressively and there was a lot of dust.

We made it safely to New Mexico and selected the Carlsbad KOA to camp at. There are bunnies everywhere and we have to keep Pepsi on a short leash. There is a dog run near our site and Pepsi learned to crawl through tunnels and was coaxed to try the seesaw. She is a motivated and fast learner.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 30, 2015
Luling, Texas to Junction, Texas

San Antonio was our main focus of the day.

We found a good shaded parking lot but decided to take Pepsi along for our tour of the city. This was definitely a problem for our Alamo visit. A very nice security guard, escorted Ruth and Pepsi off the park area premises and across the street. Martin had a brief visit but then we decided to do a quick walk around the city. An agent for one of the double decker tour bus companies told us that Pepsi was very welcome to take a bus tour with us and that’s exactly what we did.

We learned a lot about San Antonio, its Spanish heritage, the great number of German immigrants that moved into the area in the 1920s, the beautiful architecture and that it had been the capital of Texas before Austin. Unfortunately, the upper level of the bus was too hot and it wasn’t possible to take (good) pictures from the lower level.

After the tour we decided against a visit to the famous Mexican market but to do the riverwalk instead. A young architect created a plan of channeling the river with walkways on the left and right. Today there are beautiful bridges and great restaurants and bars on either side of the river. We saw a Bavarian biergarten serving Hofbräu beer and had lunch at the pet-friendly Lone Star Cafe.

After lunch we walked along the river some more.

Tired and thirsty we walked back to the van in 43C heat, gulped lots of water and then left for Junction, a small town about 200km northwest of San Antonio where we are staying at the Morgan Shady RV Park, right next to a river.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 29, 2015
Houston, Texas to Luling, Texas

It’s not rocket science (Oh wait, yes it is…)

The Houston Space Centre is the location where most manned space missions were controlled. We took a tour of the Mission Control Centre that handled 10 Gemini, 10 Apollo and 21 Shuttle missions.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” and “Houston, we’ve had a problem” were received here. The configuration of the room is as it was for Apollo 11.

Also on the tour was rocket park where the main attraction was the HUGE Saturn V rocket that took men to the moon.

Time for lunch at the main building. It really had a space-like atmosphere. The food, thank God, wasn’t de-hydrated astronaut food.

After lunch we visited several more exhibits and presentations, including a shuttle mockup, a history of rockets and the various manned missions up to the present day.

Pepsi didn’t want to visit the space centre so she checked herself into the Tailwaggers Pet Resort for the day. When we picked her up in the afternoon and asked how her day was, she said “What happens at Tailwaggers, stays at Tailwaggers…”. She gave the owner a quick good-bye and dashed to the door.

It was time to go and get some more miles under our tires. We had picked up a Texas BBQ Trail brochure at the Welcome Centre and Luling, one of the towns on the trail, was on our route so we were excited to be able to have dinner there and look for a campground in the vicinity. Unfortunately, it was closed by 6:30PM as was most of the rest of the town with the exception of the Dairy Queen.

We decided to have Ruth’s delicious rice-tuna-pea salad for dinner at the Riverbed RV Park and Campground and called it an early night.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 28, 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
Cedar Key, Florida to Grayton Beach, Florida

We said good-bye to Cedar Key but we weren’t ready to leave Florida entirely. We wanted to drive as close to the water as possible to see the lovely white beaches in the Florida panhandle. Our search for lunch made us miss a turn which resulted in a short visit of Tallahassee, the capital of Florida. Truth be told, we only had a glance from the Interstate and then returned to the smaller more coastal highway.

We stopped and saw a post showing how high the water can be during a hurricane!

Seeing all these nice beaches and white sand makes you want to take a break for a nice coffee and smoothie. Port St. Joe is a quaint little town with eclectic little stores. You could tell that it wasn’t the main season as some stores where closed and the old movie theater was abandoned. The coffee/smoothie store (bin 4eleven) was new and was doing quite well.

Time was running out so we continued on our beautiful coastal highway (US-98) without stopping at stunning white sand beaches along the way in the Mexico Beach and Panama City.

We were rewarded by getting a great camping spot at Grayton Beach State Park. Thunder and lightning prevented us from walking around too much that night but there would be tomorrow morning.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

July 23, 2015
Cedar Key, Florida

Today we took a vacation from our vacation.

No driving, no planning, no sightseeing, no musts. We had a nice scrambled egg breakfast on our own dock overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. A gentle breeze kept us nice and comfortable.

After a very short walk and some ice cream we set up the hammock and took turns reading and softly rocking in the wind.

After this strenuous activity and a cheese sandwich we desperately needed a siesta (aka an afternoon nap) in air conditioned comfort away from the heat. In the late afternoon it was cooler again and it was time for some exercise. We walked to downtown Cedar Key learning a bit about the history and looking for a seafood restaurant to have dinner at. Cedar Key was a railroad town at one time and had a thriving fishing industry until net fishing was prohibited. Tourism was the next source of income and is now accompanied by farming clams and oysters.

The town has many restaurants and bars and shows its late 19th century architecture well. There is even a very haunted hotel.

We chose a restaurant right at the waterfront and enjoyed a delicious dinner of shrimp, scallops and iced tea.

Now we just needed to walk home and enjoy the sunset from our dock.

July 22, 2015