Abita Springs LA to Livingston TX

Abita Springs was a nice place to spend a week. We made lots of visits to the local brew pub and brewery for lunches and dinner. Of course Louisiana has the best food anywhere, so we ate out several times.

Plenty of choices at the Abita Brewery

One really good find was a small grocery store on River Road in Destrahan where we stopped for a sandwich on the way to tour a plantation house. We had expected a sandwich wrapped in plastic from a refrigerator. What we found was a kitchen serving fresh Poboy sandwiches to order. We ordered a combination seafood 12” which we intended to split between us. We bought a bag of chips each to go with it.

Once featured on "American Pickers" the Abita Mystery House is a must see.

Very curious but fun place, the best museum that we've experienced for $3!

When we got it I could barely lift it! No sub roll here, it was a 12” long LOAF and so stuffed with shrimp and catfish that it spilled everywhere when we unwrapped it. We didn't have room for chips after we finished. Or dinner that night either!

National Museum of WW2

The World War 2 museum downtown in New Orleans was huge and took all day to see. The theme took you along the path of an actual person which you followed using “Dog Tags” to log onto displays scattered thru the exhibits. I was fascinated and I think Barbara was happy enough to go along too.

Plantation house in Destrehan LA

Reproduction slave quarters

We attempted to see some of the classic sights in New Orleans such as Mardi Gras World, Jackson Square, Bourbon Street etc., but parking was the usual expensive hassle and we decided that as we'd seen it all when we lived here 35 years ago we'd give it a miss.

Instead we crossed the Mississippi to the “West Bank” and searched for the house we lived in in Harvey. We thought it was HUGE back then, having recently arrived from UK. 

In our minds we had a huge lot too. In reality it was quite a nice rancher, showing it's age. The lot was really small we discovered. Smaller I think than the one in San Diego. It's funny how memories don't measure up to reality sometimes!

Our old house on Dulaney Drive in Harvey LA

A week was enough in the condo and “Hitch Itch” reared it's ugly head again. At the back of our minds the start of our trip West for the winter has been lurking. I made a “Multi Stop Trip” in the GPS. Barbara and I talked about some of the places we'd like to see along the way and roads we'd like to travel. Of course we don't like Interstates especially I10 which is the main East-West route across the South.

We've driven it several times going coast to coast and the rough surfaces and heavy truck traffic were not attracting us to do it again.

Fortunately Rt 190 went right from Abita Springs thru Louisiana into Texas to Livingston where the headquarters for our favorite RV Club the Escapees (SKP's) is located. That had to be fate!

Nice and quiet in the SKP Rainbows End RV Park

Of course it turned out that Rt 190 was pretty rough in places too, but there was almost no traffic and we happily cruised at 57mph and got nearly 8 mpg! (well it's better than the 5 to 6 we get going 65 on the Interstates). Wouldn't you like to get a 17% improvement in your fuel economy??

Texas opened it's arms to us. Gas in Livingston was $1.99 a gallon, the SKP's had room for us, there was a “Happy Hour” the first night, an ice cream social the next. We needed our propane tank filling and the local source even gave us a discount for being SKP's

We like being SKP's.

$1.99 a gallon? No problem in Livingston TX

After we posted on Facebook that we were in Texas our friends Karen and Paul contacted us to say they were north of Dallas doing their work camping for the summer in a park near Sanger. It took all of 5 seconds to change our route to include a few days visiting them. Especially when they mentioned that the nearby town of Muenster TX was having Octoberfest while we would be there!

Painting and drawing

Some of the sketches and watercolor paintings I've been doing in campgrounds for my own satisfaction. I try and select subjects I'm not good at to help me improve. This has been vehicles and RV's lately. I'm quite happy with the improvement.

Sumpter Oaks Florida colored pencils

Sumpter Oaks, colored pencils

Foscue Alabama watercolors

Bonningen Switzerland, colored pencils

Weston Super Mare, UK. Colored pencils 

Oswestry UK, colored pencils

Mosel Castle Germany, watercolors

Orlando Florida, colored pencils

Time to get going.

We had our trials.

Chased out of Florida by Irma,

Fiesta had a starting problem.

Blew a rear tire on the RV.

Smashed the lid of the casserole dish when we put the slide out.

Our neighbor at Foscue COE Park

But then we randomly picked an area to stop at halfway between Summerville and Birmingham AL and discovered a super Corps of Engineers (COE) facility called Foscue Park.

A nice quiet spot to camp

Foscue was such a pretty place we extended our stay from 2 days to 4, I even broke out my paints and did a watercolor painting of our view across the lake. The rest of the time we sat outside and watched the egrets fishing and the turtles sunning themselves on a log. Such a stressful time!

The thing about COE Parks is that they accept the National Parks Senior Pass. That normally gets us into ALL National Parks free and gets us up to 50% off camping too. Our stay in Foscue was $13 a night instead of $28, which paid the $25 cost of the pass several times over, never mind all the money we've saved in the last 2 years going to all the Parks.

An old grist mill.

After leaving there we had a rear tire blow out, they were 7 years old so we had planned on replacing them during our winter break, but they didn't make it that far!

We had 4 new rear tires fitted by a shop in Birmingham. We had reservations at a campground (without a deposit) and there was an Elks Lodge with camping near Birmingham so we went to see what the Lodge was like and if we liked it we could cancel the campground reservation! 

Turns out the camping at the lodge was less than ideal with car and train noise but for a couple of nights we made do and we had a lot of fun with fellow Elks in the lodge.

A big vintage/antique motorcycle event near Birmingham caught my attention and we decided to do Friday there, as the rest of the weekend could be pretty busy. That turned out the be an excellent idea as the crowds weren't bad at all, but more importantly ANOTHER hurricane was on it's way and headed for this area.

MV Augusta racer.

Barber had a LOT of motorcycles

I could paint these bikes for ever.

Hurricane Nate was due Saturday night - Sunday morning and, discretion being the better part of valor, we headed out!

The best direction to avoid the storm was West and the second best North. When we looked on the map there was our old favorite Memphis just 275 miles North West of us! 

We hit the road Saturday morning and stopped a night in Walmart in Tupelo Mississippi.

MMMM, Charlie Vergos BBQ!!

That broke the trip into 2 reasonable legs 175 and 100 miles each.

After 3 nights at Graceland RV Park and a delicious night out at the Charlie Vergos BBQ restaurant followed by some nice micro brews at the Flying Saucer Taproom we upped sticks again and headed due SOUTH!

Porter ale at Flying Saucer

King cotton ready for harvest

Baled and ready to go.

Wait a minute I thought we were supposed to going west towards our winter spot in Casa Grande AZ??

Well we have a week off!

Well a week out of the rig anyway. How come? We still own a timeshare near New Orleans and we called to ask if we could swap one of our weeks for a week there now and they said yes.

This will be only the second time we've stayed at our home resort IN 35 YEARS OF OWNING IT!

Indian Mounds in Mississippi

That meant a nice leisurely drive from Memphis to Abita Springs along the “Great River Road” thru Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, taking time to visit the Indian Mounds and the Vicksburg National Military Park. 

The "Great River Road" sounds really romantic and if you have visions of rolling along the banks of the great Mississippi River, forget it! You barely glimpse the river at all! But is was a very nice drive along a reasonable road with NO traffic.

USS Cairo, salvaged from the riverbed, on display in Vicksburg

Very similar to Gettysburg battlefield park, lots of monuments.