Bayou is French for “Swamp” and a Day in NOLA's French Quarter

We finished our time in the Gulf Shores deep freeze with a walk around the park trails and a visit to the pier. Rog tried making friends with a local (pelican) and I enjoyed what may be our last ocean sunset for a while. The lovely ice sculpture was compliments of the park's sprinkler system. Proof I was not exaggerating my claims of freezing weather! Lol. We departed on Tuesday, 1/10, for Bayou Segnette State Park just outside of New Orleans, LA (NOLA).

Gulf Shores ice-capades. 

Rog gets closer and closer until ...

... hey buddy - outta my bubble. 

Love the ocean sunsets. Spectacular!

Heron prints.

Bayou Segnette is about 30 minutes southwest of New Orleans on the other side of the Mississippi. We drove pretty much right through the city to get here and that was….shall we say….interesting. New Orleans is a city of bridges. Lots of bridges. Lots of really, really high and really, really long bridges. I swear we crossed lakes, canals and the serpentine Mississippi River at least twice! Gusty winds did nothing to improve the experience either. Lol. But we made it and are happy to have a quiet, peaceful respite from the hustle and bustle of New Orleans.

Bridges everywhere!

I checked and bayou is actually defined as “a sluggish marshy tributary of a lake or river”, but what they mean is “swamp”. It sure does sound better in French though. Lol. It’s not very scenic, but with daytime temps in the 70’s and just the occasional rain squall, I can live with it. :)

Not especially pretty this time of year, but no bugs and the highs are a lovely 70 degrees.

Even the swamp, excuse me, bayou is pretty at dusk. :)

Evening light reflected off the water. 

We booked the French Quarter Culinary History Tour for 10AM Thursday, 1/12. We spent about two hours walking the French Quarter, getting a behind-the-scenes look at some famous eateries and learning the differences and history of the local Creole and Cajun cuisines. 

We toured Antoine’s restaurant which was established in 1840 and has grown over the years so that now, if all the private dining rooms were occupied, it would seat over 1000 guests. We peeked into the wine cellar, a long, narrow room which measures 165-feet by 7-feet, and holds approximately 25,000 bottles when fully stocked. We also got tons of great tips for where to get the best food and have been happily working our way through a long list of New Orleans culinary must haves. :)   

Our delightful and knowledgeable guide, Elizabeth, expounds on the wonders of NOLA cuisine at Antoine's.

The aptly named Escargot Room at Antoine's. 

Antoine's wine cellar.

K-Paul's, a NOLA sensation established in 1979 by Chef Paul Prudhomme.  Best. Gumbo. Ever.  

Let’s see, in just three days, between us we’ve had: gumbo (twice!), oyster po’ boy, jambalaya, red beans and rice, gulf shrimp, muffuletta, King Cake, bread pudding with whiskey sauce, beignets with café au lait, and have plans for crawfish etouffee at the acclaimed Bon Ton Café. Please note, not a single thing served in New Orleans is low cal. It’s a good thing we are being diligent about getting in our daily 10K steps or I wouldn’t fit through the RV door. Lol.

After our culinary walking tour, we spent the day wandering around (and eating our way through) the French Quarter and visiting several museum exhibits. We toured the Presbytère, which is a state museum with Hurricane Katrina & Mardi Gras exhibits housed in an 1813 former courthouse. The Katrina exhibit was fascinating, it was very interesting to get the perspectives of the locals that lived through it and not just what was televised on CNN.

Mardi Gras exhibit - lots of incredible costumes and history. 

French Quarter details.

Not sure I'd want to be late on my rent!

We also enjoyed the historic circa-1835 mint turned museum with coin exhibits downstairs and a tribute to Louis Armstrong and a jazz venue upstairs.  We walked to the Louis Armstrong Park, a local park near the French Quarter also honoring the jazz great. We haven’t made it to any of the jazz clubs, but we’ve been incredibly impressed by the number and quality of the street musicians. Awesome music everywhere.

The New Orleans Mint is the only mint to produce coins under three governments - the USA, Louisiana (after it seceded), and the Confederacy.

Hitching posts are still in place throughout the city. 

Entrance to the Louis Armstrong Park.

Loved this small tribute painted on one of the park steps.

And, of course, we did the obligatory stroll down Bourbon Street, but I gotta say it really wasn’t my scene. During the day it just seemed dirty and desperate, maybe it would feel more lively and entertaining at night. But I’m not sure if we’ll make it back to find out. 

The (in)famous Bourbon Street.

Next on our agenda is a visit to New Orleans City Park where we have reservations for a romantic gondola ride through the park’s canals. Should be fun!

Happy Anniversary to Us and Seattle Weather on the Gulf Coast

After driving over 8000 miles to enjoy sunshine and balmy temps, Seattle’s winter weather has finally tracked us down. In fact, it is actually a few degrees colder here! Brrrrrrrrrr.  We’ve had high winds and plenty of rain, but the temps and precipitation aren’t lining up to give me snow. Sigh. That would have been something! Anyway you look at it, I think we can safely dismiss any thoughts of kayaking or snorkeling for now. Lol.

Bundled up for our walkies.

We caught just the very edge of a huge storm that blew through the Gulf Coast a bit north of Saint Andrews on Monday. We had an awesome lightning show and some rain, but it cleared up for our departure. We left Florida for Gulf Shores State Park in Alabama on Tuesday, 1/3, which also happened to be our 36^th wedding anniversary. Obviously, Rog has some long-term masochistic tendencies and considering he’s spent the last five months in a 33 ft. box with me… well he’s either certifiable or should be canonized (or both!). Lol.

We had a nice dinner out at Cosmos in Orange Beach to celebrate with excellent peanut butter pie for dessert. Now that all the holidays are over, I’ve run out of excuses to indulge. Speaking of masochistic tendencies, my sister-in-law, Kim, challenged a group of us on Fitbit to try for 10K steps a day and my brother, Tim, and I are also abusing each other with a 10K step challenge on Stridekick. My competitive streak is alive and well. Lol.  Rog and I have also started to track our calories again, time to starting weighing (us), measuring (our food) and logging (both) again. No fun, but extremely effective. Another sigh. :)

Luckily, there are beautiful beaches, and a really nice set of nature trails and paved paths all accessible from the campground.  Unfortunately, other than the beach, the area just isn’t that picturesque. It’s pretty bad when we walked for over two hours without taking a single picture. No mountain views, towering trees or rocky vistas here. Lol!

Gulf Shores beach at sunset.

Beach pavilion.

Having way too much fun hunting for sea shells.

So far we’ve done pretty well on our steps (did I mention my competitive streak? Lol). We walked before breakfast one day to beat the rain. Then on Thursday we did 25 miles on the paved bike trails here in the park. It was brisk but sunny and not too windy. Perfect riding weather. There were benches all along the trail, mostly "in loving memory of...". It started to feel like riding through a graveyard, so we really got a kick out of those with a different twist. Talk about unfair though, biking doesn't give us any credit for steps so we still had to hoof it around the park. We ended up on the beach at sunset and then had to feel our way home in the dark. Lol. 

Love the paved trail and it's FLAT!

Beautiful cardinal - we don't see these at home.

Azaleas blooming in January.

Loved the sentiment! Here's a couple with a sense of humor.

'Bama gator sighting!

Apparently the heron thinks his name is "Dumpster". :)

Shafts of light through the clouds.

At 1,540 feet long, Gulf Shores State Park has the second longest pier on the Gulf of Mexico. 

Dunes in the fading light.

On Friday, 1/6, the storms returned and brought buckets of rain and plummeting temps. We spent some time browsing a book store, picked up a small electric heater so our furnace doesn’t need to run as much, and hung out at Starbucks. My computer is behaving very badly, so I spent a couple hours trying to troubleshoot that with my brother Tim’s help. No love yet, but I have a few more things to try before I hand it over to the professionals. As night fell, so did the temperatures. We’re talking low 20’s and a frozen water hose cold on the Gulf coast. Really?

What we hadn’t realized was that we’d parked our RV under Hogwarts Whomping Willow tree. We woke in the night to the sound of howling winds and a loud creaking and scraping as the huge Southern Live Oak above us tried to claw its way through our roof. At 3AM Rog finally got dressed, crawled up onto the roof of the RV and used a pair of hand pruners to trim the branches. A little creative horticulture in the dead of night. Lol.

Parked beneath the Whomping Willow (which got a late night haircut!). Lol.

Our game plan for the next few days is to get our walkies in and then hunker down next to the space heater. I'll work some more on beating my Surface Book and Microsoft Windows into submission (don't lay any bets on that!). It should gradually get warmer and may even get close to 70˚by Tuesday, 1/10, the day we’re scheduled to leave. But, as Rog reminds me, we don’t have to leave if we don’t want to! We have no reservations for our next stop, so we are totally in discretionary time. That feels soooooooooo weird. Lol.  

A Beach Ball Bash and a Belated Five Month Anniversary Update

The weather has been fickle, with wild swings in temps and forecasts for thunderstorms and rain. So when our wetsuits arrived, we decided that we couldn’t wait for optimal conditions if we wanted to try them out. Although it was cloudy and blustery, we geared up on Saturday, 12/28, and headed for the rock jetties. There were a few hardy souls in the water, but the visibility was poor. Even so, we had fun and I’m happy to report the wetsuits worked great. Compared to the cost of renting, we figure we only need to use them three times and they’ll have paid for themselves. One down and two to go! Lol.

We’d hoped to do more kayaking and snorkeling here, but the weather just wasn’t in a cooperative mood. With heavy rains predicted for the last few days of our stay, we decided to put our water toys away early. It’s much easier to clean and pack everything up when it’s dry. Maybe we’ll have better luck next week in Gulf Shores.

Move over Jacques Cousteau! lol.

Anemones are easier to photograph than the fast moving fish! 

The appropriately named Blue Crab. 

It is interesting being in a tourist town in the off season. We use Yelp a lot to find local businesses and, more importantly, ice cream! Unfortunately, we’ve been on several wild goose chases – driving miles only to find the store or, tragically, ice cream shop “closed for the season”. Arrrgh. It’s not just the small mom and pop places either, many of the larger restaurants close completely or reduce hours. After striking out repeatedly, we’re learning to call first. Just something that is different from home.

Another thing that happens in the parks during the off season here is “prescribed burns”. They use fire to clear away the undergrowth and burn off the vegetation that would compete with the pine trees. We’ve seen it here in the state park and we ran into it on our second bike ride at Conservation Park. We were stymied not once, but three times with trail closures for prescribed burns. We still managed to get in about 14 miles and enjoyed the trails that were open including biking on the boardwalks.

Ran into these signs more than once, 

Sneaked a peek at the burned area - made me think of  Tolkien's Mirkwood.

Biking the boardwalks was fun; there is a total of 1.3 miles of boardwalk in the park and I think we hit them all.

Happy New Year! Of course, Florida would celebrate New Year’s with a beach ball drop. Lol.  In fact, there were two celebrations at Pier Park – a 10,000 beach ball drop at 8pm for the little kids and a lighted “beach ball” drop at midnight for the big kids. Of course, I wanted to see both! But how to kill the four hours in between??? Star Wars Rogue One – that’s how!

It worked out perfectly – we got there early, did a little shopping and had dinner. Walked down for the 10,000 ball drop and then hit the 9:10pm showing of Rogue One. We walked out of the theater at 11:45pm and the live music venue and festivities were right outside the doors. We watched the drop, toasted the New Year (yes, I smuggled in my own champagne! Lol.), and then enjoyed the fireworks show. We got lucky with the timing, it’s so nice when plans work out.

Waiting for the drop.....

..... and there they go!

The lighted beach ball drops at midnight.

Happy New Year!

Enjoying the fireworks show. 

Starting 2017 with a giant beach ball. lol. 

We’ve still been trying to get in our 10K steps, so we’ve walked the campground and beaches here in the park several times. (Rog actually ran several days, but you know he’s doing that alone! Lol.) I’ve mentioned that we frequently see deer, but we were thrilled when a tiny fawn walked almost right up to Rog with an “Are you my mommy?” look. I didn’t have my camera, but we snapped some pics with our phones. So adorable.

Hello. Are you my mommy?

Guess not, see ya!

We’ve been having a blast beachcombing too. I love hunting for shells. At first we were only searching along the surf line, then we discovered that where the sand dunes have been worn away, it’s like an archaeological dig. The layers of shells look just like rock strata. Very cool. On New Year’s day, we did a beach walk and enjoyed watching a heron snag a crab for breakfast. The beach was strewn with yellow roses. Not sure what the story was there, but it made for a fun photo op. Lol.

Excavating the layers of shells is like an archaeological dig. 

Great Blue heron.

Gorgeous bird.

Breakfast!

Snowy Egret.

Hey, check out my stylish yellow shoes!

Beachy perspective.

Roses in the sand.

Supply your own metaphor. Lol.

December 25th was our five-month anniversary on the road!  I almost forgot to do the monthly update. Let’s blame it on the holidays, not my memory (or lack thereof). This last month has been the slowest travel-wise, only 913 miles compared to our first month when we logged 2396 miles.

So far we’ve driven a total of 8248 miles in the RV, pumped 943 gallons of diesel, stayed at 51 different places, visited 14 National Parks/Monuments, many state/local parks, Disney and Universal Studios, and hit 26 states. 

I’d have to say that easily the highlight of this past month was swimming with the manatees. The toughest part was celebrating Christmas without the girls. A first, and while I’m sure it won’t be the last, hopefully it will be a long time before it happens again.

Our expectations for long lazy days on a Florida beach haven’t quite materialized. Our time in the Florida Keys was warm enough, but we had to contend with extremely high humidity and bloodthirsty bugs. As we moved further up the coast the weather has cooled considerably, with some days barely making it into the 50’s. More fleece than swimsuit weather. Lol. While we’ve had some sunny days, there have also been plenty with dense fog, overcast skies, blustery winds, and a fair share of rain.  Still, it’s a far cry from the deep freeze elsewhere, so no complaints, but it hasn't been quite a palm tree paradise either. Lol.

Rog reminded me that we are now heading west and each mile will bring us a little closer to home. We have seven months left with lots still to see and do, so it was hard wrapping my head around the fact that we’re actually on our way home now. Not sure how I feel about that. Lol.

Our next stop is Gulf Shores, Alabama and then we plan to visit New Orleans. After that, there is nothing on my spreadsheet! I know, hard to believe!!  I promised Rog the second half of the trip would not be as scripted, so we have to figure out how that works.

From here on out it really will be more of an adventure. Should be interesting! Glad you are along for the ride. :)