We are family.....

Panama City Beach, FL  February 11 - 15, 2013

We left Breaux Bridge, LA early in the morning hoping to beat the weather heading to Panama City Beach, Florida which was a longer drive than we normally like.  It did not work out like we had hoped.  We drove for eight hours is the pouring rain with very little visibility.  It was horrendous, between the rain and the traffic we didn't think we would ever make it.  The one fun part of the drive was crossing so many state lines; we left Louisiana, drove thru Mississippi then Alabama and finally into Florida.  One of my favorite things is to read all of the new laws that are posted when you cross state lines - crazy I know.  We finally did pull into Rustic Sands RV Park in Mexico Beach(just outside of Panama City Beach) right before dark in time to set up camp.  We chose a fairly large back-in site and had way too much help from the other guests, but we finally settled in.  It is a very nice campground with lots of trees and very nice " snowbirds."

We drove into Panama City Beach to visit the stores owned by my cousins and have a mini family reunion lunch.  We started at Big Willy's the largest of their three stores where we saw my cousin Mark and his daughter Melissa.  They are very busy getting ready for Spring Break season, but the stores looked great to us - so many fun t-shirts, souvenirs and beachwear.  We then went to the second store where we met my cousin Terri.  She had managed to get all of the family members to come to lunch on very short notice; my aunt Linda and three of her four kids;  Mark, Terri and Valerie; Mark's wife Julie and newly engaged daughter Melissa (congratulations); Terri's husband David and son Andrew.  It was so great to see everyone.  It had been way too long.  Mark gave us lots of great tips on what to see on our future travels.

 

 

We spent the rest of our visit walking the beaches and running some much needed errands.  The Florida beaches are gorgeous!  Beautiful white sand and clear water.  We spent two lovely days walking the beach and letting the dogs run wild chasing birds.  Calcite actually believes she can fly.  On our second day a pod of dolphins swam along the shoreline accompanying us on our walk.

Coming soon.... Inverness, Florida with Mom and JT... woo hoo!

Gators, Turtles and Snakes Oh My

Breaux Bridge, LA    February 8 - 11, 2013

We decided to make a stop near Lake Martin, LA to take a recommended swamp tour so we could finally see alligators.  We drove south through Mississippi and back into Louisiana.  The eastern part of Louisiana was much prettier than our earlier stops.  We found this great RV Park called Poche’s Fish and Camp.  We were given a great site with water on both sides.  It was a little tricky back-in spot and not my best effort, but we settled in nicely.  The dogs loved it… Calcite swam every day.

We scheduled our swamp tour for the next day with Bryan Champagne a French Cajun Louisiana local.  The two hour tour was on Bayou Teche which was damed to create Lake Martin and was really fantastic.  We learned all about the plant and animal life in the swamps.  We saw alligators big and small, snakes, nutria rats, and a large rookery with snowy egrets, and great blue herons nesting.  The rookery closes on February 15^th to all boat traffic as that is when nesting season really kicks into high gear with hundreds and hundreds of birds.  There were between 200-300 birds for our trip.  The flat bottom boat was built by Bryan and only drew one and a half inches of water.  It would roll over all of the logs in the water and roll side to side…. a little scary with alligators all around.  We did get stuck once while trying to get closer to a huge gator, but Bryan didn’t break a sweat.  I will say he put his motor through hell and it was a great endorsement for a Mercury engine.  We came to Breaux Bridge just for this tour and it was worth it. 

We made a trip into town to finally try the Louisiana sensation…. Crawfish.  We decided on Crazy ‘Bout Crawfish.  Peg ordered 3 lbs. of crazy spiced boiled crawfish.  When she asked the waiter for crawfish eating instructions all of the surrounding tables offered their own tips and advice.  At the end of evening she decided it was good, but not worth the work, the mess and the stains on her shirt.  Her final comment…”It ain’t lobster”.

 

Coming soon… Panama City Beach and Inverness, FL

Miss... iss... ippi...

Vicksburg, MS    February 4 – 8, 2013

Our drive in took us over the great Mississippi River into the great state of Mississippi.  It was interesting to see the landscape change dramatically from Louisiana - much greener and the roads were much larger.  The Magnolia RV Park in Vicksburg was very old, but turned out to be very nice.  They gave us an extra site to park the truck and there was a huge field for the dogs to run and frolic.  We had the added bonus of being five minutes from everything – what a treat.

Our first day we drove into downtown Vicksburg to see the Coca-Cola museum and the old corner drugstore.  It is a great downtown area very well preserved with lots of Antebellum (Pre Civil War which began in 1861) buildings.  Coca-Cola syrup was invented by Dr. John Pemberton a pharmacist in his Atlanta backyard in 1886.  Vicksburg is where Coca-Cola was bottled for the first time in 1894 by Joseph Biedenharn a candy merchant.  Before that you could only get your delicious and refreshing fuzzy beverage at a soda fountain for 5 cents where they mixed the syrup with club soda.  It was great fun to see all of the old bottling machines and advertisements.  The key to Coca-Cola’s success was their advertising.  It was promoted to be good for you - cured headaches and the afternoon doldrums!  The Colonial Corner Drugstore had a huge display of medicines from the civil war era and all kinds of bottles and contraptions. 


Old Coca-Cola advertising

Colonial Corner Drugstore

The next day we visited the Lower Mississippi River Museum where we learned all about Vicksburg and the Mississippi River.  Only the southern tip of Vicksburg remains on the Mississippi River today, most of it is now on the Yazoo diversion channel, but back in the 1800’s it was a crucial port in history.  This is a fabulous brand new hands-on museum.  They also have the motor vessel Mississippi IV on display and open for touring.  It was a working Towboat from the 1960’s to early 90’s.  We were able to walk throughout the ship and they even had a driving simulator where we tried to dock the boat – quite fun.  We then went over to the McNutt House circa 1826 the second oldest structure in downtown Vicksburg.  Unfortunately it has been turned into an Inn so we were really only able to tour two rooms and the garden.  The current owner is a huge history buff and gave us more information than we could have ever asked for.

We saved our last day for the Vicksburg National Military Park and it was a great day.  We watched a short movie on the 46 day siege between Lt Gen John Pemberton (no relation to the inventor of Coca-Cola syrup) of the Confederacy and Maj. Gen Ulysses Grant of the Union.  This was a crucial win for the Union. The Confederacy had a great location in Vicksburg, high on the banks of the Mississippi.  So, Grant put time on his side and the Confederacy was finally broken, not in battle, but by disease and starvation.  The national park has over 1,340 monuments and markers with a 16 mile driving tour.  Over 20,000 Americans died in the battle of Vicksburg. Each state that participated in the battle had their own monument and some of the monuments were amazing.  They also have the only remaining ironclad ship “Cairo” on display along with all of the artifacts they collected when it was raised from the Yazoo canal.

Illinois Monument

 

Texas Monument

                                                               Ironclad USS Cairo

Vicksburg was a great stop!  

Coming soon… Breaux Bridge, LA and Panama City Beach, FL                                                       

They are dying to get outta there.....

Marksville, LA  January 30 - February 4, 2013

We left Lake Charles and headed north to Marksville to see the Mystic Mounds.  On our drive through Louisiana we couldn't help but notice that there are dead people everywhere.  Not sure how it works here but around every corner there are elevated concrete tombs anywhere from five or six to a large actual cemetary.  Peg joked that you could hear the mother's saying "go play in the tombstones".  The title of today's blog is thanks to Todd Fairbairn who used to say "They are dying to get outta there" every time they drove by a cemetary. 

Note the McDonald's and the highway!

We decided on the Paragon Casino Resort RV park on the Tunica-Biloxi Indian reservation in the heart of Marksville mainly because it was only $8.50 per night... woo hoo.  It turned out to be a really nice park.  Nice large concrete sites with lots of grass areas.  It was fairly deserted when we arrived so we had the place to ourselves.

                                                        Paragon Casino RV resort

Our first day we headed to the Marksville Historic Site to see the indian mounds.  There was a little museum where they required an excort by a docent named Doyle, a very nice gentleman with a lot of information that he slowly stuttered out.  Basically the mounds were built by prehistoric indians of the Hopewell culture.  They really don't know much about the why or the how, but it is a 42 acre area surrounded by the Old Missippi River on one side and then a 5 to 7 foot high earthwork (a kind of berm) line of demarcation between the outside world and the sanctified region within.  It contained six mounds only one of which was used for burial sites and one was a sort of  platform or stage.  The others appear to be used for astronomical guidance.  They lined up exactly with the equinoxes.  There was a professional geologist in the museum with us which made for some interesting conversation - for Peg :).  The mounds themselves didn't appear phenominal to us, they just looked like part of the landscape.  All of the mounds have been escavated starting in 1926 and then rebuilt.  They found evidence of pottery etc, in some of them and also that two of the mounds were made from white dirt not found in the immediate area.  The best part of the excursion was when they let us walk the area with the dogs running free.  We then headed over to the Grand Cote National Wildlife Refuge for a two mile hike through the swamp.  Lots of birds and yucky mossy water.  I was terrifed to let Zoe out of my sight sure than an alligator was going to snap her up at any moment.

                                                         Indian Mound - can you see it?

                                               Grand Cote National Wildlife Refuge?

The next day we were going to catch a movie at the casino, but Zoe had a case of the runs and we didn't want to leave her alone for any length of time so we headed out to find the Sarto Old Iron Bridge.  This was the first steel-truss swinging bridge built over Bayou des Glaises in 1916 and is a rare surviving example of its kind.  It was cool how the gears were built to swing the center section out like a sideways draw bridge. 

                                                               Sarto Old Iron Bridge

On Saturday we drove to the Kisatchie National Forest which was an hour away to avail ourselves of the "120 miles of hiking trails through the pine trees".  This is the only national forest in Louisiana and we know why.  We couldn't even tell when we entered the national forest as there were still houses and shops throughout.  The ranger station didn't have any maps of the hiking trails only hunting and fishing information.  We just meandered around the roads until we finally found a small recreation area with a little lake and thought we would stop and let the dogs run a bit.  As we headed down a path towards the water we came upon several very well marked hiking trails complete with color coded markers.  We took a very nice three mile hike through the pine trees!

Sunday was dedicated to the Super Bowl - we even used out outstide tv for a while!  The rv park had completely filled up on Friday night for what we thought was Super Bowl weekend, but as it turned out they just get a huge weekend business, because everyone cleared out Sunday morning and by the time the game was on we were all alone again.  We did take a really nice walk on a beautiful boardwalk out the back of the rv park that went all along the bayou (a slow moving river in the south) and through the Indian Reservation headquarters.

As we prepared to head out Monday morning a very nice gentleman came over to watch us hook up - it must be quite a sight!  It turned out he was from New Iberia, LA and when we told him we were headed to Houma he was hard pressed to say anything good about it.  He mentioned that Martin Lake was where we should go for an airboat tour.  Great suggestion as it is far away from the Mardi Gras festivities and more on our path to Florida.  Thanks!

Coming soon..... Vicksburg, MS and Lake Martin, LA

Born on the Bayou....

Lake Charles, LA  January 25 - 30, 2013

It turns out the drive east out of Texas is much easier than the trek west.  We made the six hour drive from Georgetown to Lake Charles, Louisiana in one day and arrived at the Quiet Oaks RV park.  Other than the requisite train rumbling by every hour it was actually pretty quiet.  Our first impression of Louisiana is flat and soggy.  We keep hearing about alligators, but didn't see a one.  I think they are a thing of the past just like the bears in the northwest.

Quiet Oaks RV park

We had a relaxing few days, catching up on laundry and household chores.  We took a drive on the Creole Nature Trail which was a sixty mile loop around the Lake Charles area.  It took us through farmland, neighborhoods, along the coast and through several wildlife refuges.  The only nature we really saw were birds.  We took the opportunity to use our new bird book (thanks Alex and Jacob) to practice our bird identifying skills.  We went into the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge visitor center to read about the area's wildlife and we were treated to a downhome Louisiana presentation we could barely understand.  We were hoping to drive the Pintail Wildlife trail in the Cameron Prairie NWR, but it was closed due to flooding from the three weeks of rain they had before we arrived.  We were treated to a ferry ride across a channel where the pelicans were plentiful.  Every stop along the trail was filled with families fishing and crabbing.  We found out they flood the rice fields during the winter to harvest the crawfish.

We drove into Dowtown Lake Charles to visit the Charpentier Historic District which is french for carpenter.  The house designs were unique in that the carpenters seldom held too closely to original designs, adding turrets, towers and wrap around porches for charm.  This style is known as "Lake Charles Style Architecture".  To be honest it was hard to find many of these houses as most have been allowed to fall into disarray.  We did see some that people had put time and money into to resurrect.  It seemed the district owes a lot to the local attorney's who have turned many of these homes into offices.  We attempted to try some crawfish at the well known Steamboat Bill's, but it was 3:00 and they didn't serve them until after 5pm - whatever! 

We used our final day to experience one of the many casinos in Louisiana.  We drove to the Coushatta Casino just a few miles up the road.  It was a huge complex complete with three hotels and a luxury RV park.  Inside it looked just like Vegas.  Lots of old people sitting smoking and pulling slot machine levers as fast as they could.  There were all the standard table games and a few new ones I had never heard of.  We just walked through and headed home - no room in the budget for gambling.

Coming soon.... Marksville then Houma, LA