One type of place that Ann & I camp at are casinos. While neither of us are big gamblers, casinos often have RV parks or allow us to park overnight for free. They often have great food and drink specials. Plus, we are both avid people watchers, and casinos offer up plenty of interesting people to watch. On top of all of that, we sometimes actually win money!

Our first stop after leaving New Orleans was the Cypress Bayou Casino, an American Indian casino located near Baldwin, LA. This casino has a RV park that offer full hookups, paved sites, with many being pull through, and cable TV for only $10 a night. They do not have a shower house, pool or laundry facilities. In addition to the low price per night, the casino comps each of us $10 in free slot machine plays.

The “casino” is actually two casinos, Cypress Bayou and Shorty’s. They are in two different buildings with an enclosed walkway between them. I am not sure why they did it that way, probably for legal reasons. But if you go there, be sure you check out both (we didn’t know the second casino was there till our second visit). There is no hotel at this casino, although one is now being built about 1/2 mile away.

Their Mexican restaurant had great Happy Hour deals while we were there: $1 Margaritas and 1/2 priced appetizers. We definitely took advantage of those deals!

While we were heading home from Texas, we stayed the night in Shreveport, LA, just across the Texas border on I-20. Here we stayed the night in the Sam’s Town Casino’s parking lot. Right next door to Sam’s Town is the Eldorado Casino. Both of these casinos have hotels attached to them. When we signed up for player’s cards, Sam’s Town gave each of us $5 in free slot plays, while the Eldorado didn’t comp us anything.

The Eldorado is decorated nicely, although Ann will tell you that their huge central light fixture needed cleaning. I won $30 playing slots there so we treated ourselves to the Sam’s Town all you can eat buffet. They discount the buffet 50% for those of us who are over 50 years old, so the price was only $8.00 each. This turned out to be about what we thought the buffet was worth. The seafood was good (crab legs, fried shrimp), but the beef was over done and there was a lack of vegetable dishes. However, they had plenty of tasty deserts.

The next night we stayed in Vicksburg, MS at the Ameristar Casino’s RV Park. For $22.50 a night you get full hook ups, cable TV, a shower house, coin-op laundry facilities and a small swimming pool (unheated, so we didn’t try it out). We also received vouchers for a free breakfast buffet for both of us at the casino.

The Vicksburg casinos all used to be riverboats. However, the riverboats are all now sitting on dry land. The Ameristar has a hotel, however it is not attached to the casino. You have to ride a shuttle to go between them.

Up the street from the Ameristar is Diamond Jack’s. This is a bit of a hike, if you are walking, as you have to climb a large hill from the casinos to reach the main road. There is a fence between the two properties so you cant just walk along the river. It’s easiest if you go down the drive to the park that is between the Ameristar and Diamond Jacks.

Diamond Jacks gave each of us $10 in free slot play and they had a promo game going where Ann won another $5 in slot play and I won $5 in cash. Diamond Jacks has a hotel right next door to the casino.

This evening we didn’t win quite as much, so we went back to the trailer and made Cincinnati Chili.  Yum!

One thing we don’t like about casinos is the cigarette smoke. We have found that the later it gets in the evening, the heavier the smoke gets. If you go to the casinos in the morning or early afternoon, the smoke is not as bad.

As far as the gambling goes, we set a budget on how much we want to spend, then try not to go over that. And when we are significantly ahead, we quit (or at least try to .

Tuesday, Feb 16

It’s Mardi Gras Day! One last day to go crazy before we have to start behaving ourselves during the Lenten season.

Today we will see several daytime parades. We are sitting in a different location this time. We are in the viewing stands by historic Gallier Hall. Built in 1845, it served as the New Orleans City Hall for 100 years. The parades will be MCed by New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagen, who arrives by horseback.

Mayor Ray Nagen arrives on horseback

There are several walking groups preceding the first parade. One of the more interesting ones was a collection on “sheets”:

One of the pre-parade walking groups

The largest, and most famous, of the Mardi Gras Day walking parades is Jazz Clarinetist Pete Fountain’s Half-Fast Walking Club. Originally named the Half-Assed Walking Club (Pete changed the name under pressure of the parade organizers), The group meets at 5AM for a liquid breakfast, then continue the drinking as the amble down the parade route. This is the group’s 50th year in the parade.

Pete Fountain and his Half-Fast Walking Club

The first parade is the Zulu’s, officially known as the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club. The krew, formed in the early 1900′s, is predominantly African American. They dress up in grass skirts and put on black face. However, ther King, Queen and court wear gorgeous and elaborate costumes.

While the Zulu’s have a theme every year, thy do not use themed floats. They have several that they reuse every year, but for their other floats they use whatever is available to rent.

The Zulu throws can be unique. The prized throw to get is one of their hand painted coconuts. Other throws feature coconuts, shrunken heads and other Zulu-themed items.

A Zulu Parade float

Following the Zulu parade is the Rex Parade. This parade has wonderfull themed floats. The theme this year was “Fables of Fire and Flame”, and the floats did a great job of depicting that theme.

A theme float in the Rex Parade

Like Zulu and many of the other Krewes, Rex has a Royal Court consisting of King Rex, a Captain (who is the head of the krewe), Lieutenants (who ride on horseback in the parade), an other “royalty”.

King Rex greets his loyal subjects

The Rex parade throws aren’t as nice as many Zulu or Muse. There were a few generic “Rex” themed beads, but we think last year’s parade had better throws.

Last, and certainly not least, is the “Truck Parade”. This is a parade where any group can decorate a flat bed semi tractor trailer truck and have it in tghe parade. Most of the floats were put together by various neighborhood groups or civic associations. There were over 100 of them!

The participants on the floats threw out all sorts of throws. Some of them you can tell were collected at other parades.

One of the floats in the Truck Parade

After a long day filled with parades, we boarded the busses to head back to the campground. Just when the busses were ready to leave, we got stuck waiting for a LONG line of empty floats being driven back to the Mardi Gras World warehouse. So, you can say we got to see the parades twice!

As always, photos from these parades can be seen in our Photo Gallery.

Monday, Feb 15

Today we toured the National World War II Museum. Originally named the D-Day Museum, it opened in 2000. It’s mission is to honor all of the amphibious “D-Day” invasions of WW II.

The museum was founded by historian Dr. Stephen  Ambrose. It is located in New Orleans ostensibly because New Orleans in the home of Andrew Higgins, who’s company manufactured the Higgens Landing Craft, which were used for the D-Day amphibious landings. However, the fact that Dr. Ambrose was a long time professor at the University of New Orleans may have had an influence on the museum’s location as well.

The museum does a good job of showing the years leading up to D-Day. One of the features we really liked were the little kiosks that gave brief memoirs from real people who were effected by World War II. As you progress through the museum you hear more of their stories. Not being old enough to have experienced the war ourselves, these memoirs help personalize it for us.

A Higgins landing craft on display at the National WW II Museum

The museum recently completed a new addition across the street that includes several theaters. In one, they have a live Broadway-type of show. The other theater features an immersive (they call it 4-D) movie called Beyond All Boundaries. The movie, produced and narrated by Tom Hanks, that tells the World War II story from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day. Much like the museum displays, it tells the story not just from the soldier’s point of view, but also from the viewpoint of journalists and home front workers as well. The movie uses multilayered screens, CGI, rumbling seats and even snow falling on the audience to tell the story. It was a very interesting experience.

Afte leaving the Museum, we walked a few blocks to the Riverwalk Marketplace to attend the Lundi Gras celebration.

According to Wikipedia, Lundi Gras started in 1874 when Rex decided he wanted to make a grand entrance from the Mississippi River. He would arrive via boat, then take carriages to City Hall where the Mayor would present him with the key to the city. It turned out to be a very popular event and continued annually until Mardi Gras was suspended for World War I. When celebrations resumed two years later, the Lundi Gras tradition was forgotten.

In 1987, Lundi Gras was resurrected and is held at the Spanish Plaza, which is part of the Riverwalk Marketplace. In addition to Rex’s arrival, there is live music and fireworks. A few years ago, they started having Rex meet King Zulu for the first time at Lundi Gras.

There were a lot of people in Spanish Plaza, but it wasn’t over crowded. We saw performances by Bucktown All Stars and John “Papa” Gros & the Krewe du Karnival. Everyone had a great time, with some parading around the plaza.

A couple enjoying the Lundi Gras celebration.

At 6PM, Rex arrived on a Coast Guard boat. He meets the Mayor of the City and reads a proclomation demanding that the Mayor decree that Mardi Gras Tuesday a city holiday and that all laws should be suspended for the day. The Mayor agrees to the demands, then he and Rex greet King Zulu. Afterwards, there are fireworks and another band.

Our friend Mike and I decide to go check out Bourbon Street. Ann and Mike’s Wife Christine take the bus back to the rally. Bourbon Street was hopping, with a lot of people having a great time (some were having too much of a good time).

Bourbon Street Celebrations

Some of the entertainment is predictable, Karaoke bars, strip shows, female impersonator shows, etc. Some was less predictable, such a a German Bar, run by Asians, that had a Dixieland Band or a bar with a  solo guitarist playing in front of a screen showing Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.

All in all, a great people watching experience.

Sunday, Feb 15

The majority of the floats in the Mardi Gras parades are created by one of six float building companies in the New Orleans area. The largest of these float builders is Kern Studios. Kern Studios was founded by Blaine Kern in 1947. Throughout the years he has worked to promote the New Orleans Mardi Gras and strived to make it the tourist attraction it is today. In the late 1960′s, he and other entrepreneurs who were not in the “upper crust” of New Orleans society formed the Endymion and the Bacchus krewes, for which you needed no social credentials to join. Both krewes had huge parades with the biggest, most extravagant floats ever. They also broke tradition in that the krewes King, instead of being a member of the krewe, was a celebrity.

Today, Kern Studios is the largest float building company in the world. They make floats for many parades, not just Mardi Gras. In addition, they make “props” for many commercial customers. A good example of this are the cows on the Chick-fil-A  billboards.

In order to handle requests for tours of their float making facilities, Kern opened Mardi Gras World. They have a small museum featuring props, costumes and a brief history of Mardi Gras. The studio tour is very interesting. You see how the props are constructed out of Styrofoam, paper mache or fiberglass.

Many of the props are stored, and reused on other floats

You can see more photos of Mardi Gras World in our Photo Album.

We then went across town to visit Basin Street Station. This was originally a freight office, built in 1904, for the New Orleans Transit Company / Southern Railroad. Today, it has been remodeled as a tourism office and local history museum.

We had a catered lunch on the top floor, which offered a great view of the area, including Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, which dates back to 1789. Cemetaries in New Orleans are above ground tombs, due to the fact that the city lies below sea level and the ground is too wet for a typical in-ground grave. The Voodoo Priestess, Marie Laveau, is believed to be buried there.

St. Louis Cemetary No. 1

I also saw a Mardi Gras Indian walking down the street by the cemetery. Mardi Gras Indians are African-Americans who dress up in American Indian costumes during Carnival celebrations. The tradition started mid 19th century. There are several theories on how this tradition started, one of which is that, due to racial segregation, blacks dressed up as Indians in order to be able to celebrate Mardi Gras.

A Mardi Gras Indian

This evening we attended the Krewe of Tin Cans Mardi Gras Ball. Everyone attending the rally dressed up in costumes for the event. We had a home cooked dinner, prepared by the hosting unit, open bar and a great DJ.

The highlight of the night was the crowning of the ball’s King & Queen. Their name was drawn from a hat by last year’s King & Queen, Hugh & Euna Ridenour. This year’s King & Queen are Gail & Bill Zanger, from California.

The 2010 Krewe of Tin Cans Mardi Gras Royal Court

As always, you can view photos of the Ball, and all of our other activities in our Photo Album.

Saturday, Feb 13

Good News: Friday the 13th is on a Saturday this month! (A flashback for those of you who remember the Pogo comic strip)

Today’s outing is a ride on the Steamboat Natchez. The Natchez is one of only two true steam powered riverboats that are on the Mississippi river today. She is the ninth steamboat to carry the name Natchez. Her predecessor, the Natchez VI, raced the Robert E. Lee in the most famous steamboat race of all time.

While this stern wheeled ship was built in 1975, her steam engines were built in 1929. She has an authentic 32 note steam calliope, which is played before every departure.

Video of the Natchez’ calliope being played

Our trip will take us around six miles down river, then back. A buffet luncheon that includes fried chicken & red beans & rice is included as well. The food was OK, but don’t take the trip just for the food. There is a lot better available elsewhere in the area.

The DO make a fantastic Bloody Mary, however. It has Old Bay on the rim and has pickled green beans and pickled okra as garnishes. Very tasty!

Downtown New Orleans as seen from the Steamboat Natchez

Early Saturday evening we took off for City Park to see the start of the Endymion  parade. The krewe’s name comes from greek mythology. The formed in 1967, and by 1974 became the largest of the “Super Krewes”, with huge multi-leveled, multi-car floats.

We do not have seats for this parade. Instead, we go to where the queue up all of the floats before the start of the parade. Lots of families gather here as well. You get to stroll around and see all of the floats close up.

It takes a while for the parade to depart, as long pauses, for traffic & such, are common. The float rides toss out many throws, whicg het harder and harder to see due to the lack of street lights in the park. Ann was wounded when some beads hit her in the face and gave her a bloody lip.

A member of the Endymion Royal Court.

As always, you can see many more photos of this and the other parades and events in our Photo Gallery

Friday, Feb 12

Thursday night’s rains continued through the night, finally tapering off around 8AM this morning. We awoke to find all of our trailers were sitting in what looked like a shallow lake (we nick named it Lake Wally, after Wally Byam, the inventor of the Airstream and the founder of the WBCCI). I went to the breakfast gathering to get some donuts and asked if the Levees had held. I don’t think the locals thought I was very funny…

This morning’s tour is to the New Orleans School of Cooking. They have a place in the French Quarter where they hold classes, but due to the size of our group, our class is being held on the top floor of the old Jax Beer Brewery, which has been converted into a retail mall.

What we attended was actually a cooking demonstration. They gave us the recipes, and the instructor cooked them while we watched. After the demo we were served the same dishes, which had been prepared in a separate kitchen by professional chefs.

We were told about the history of New Orleans and how it related to the food and the cooking methods they used. It was all very interesting material, but what made the experience really great was that our instructor, Anne, was hilarious! She had a funny story, joke  or anecdote to go with every piece of information. At the conclusion, we realized that she had been hired primarily for her presentation skills, and her cooking skills were a secondary consideration. Don’t get me wrong, she definitely knew how to cook, but the experience would have been a lot less entertaining if she had been “just” a cook.

Anne prepares Pralines

After the cooking demo was finished, we had a couple of hours to wander around the French Quarter. After that it was back on the buses to go back to the rally site to prepare for the night’s parades.

New Orleans’ Mardi Gras officially kicks off on January 6th (also known as the Twelfth Night or Epiphany), and runs through Fat Tuesday, which is the day before Lent officially starts. During that period, there are dozens of balls and parades. While Bourbon Street is famous for it’s bawdy revelry (women sometimes expose their breasts in order to get beads), none of the major parades go through that area due to narrow streets and low hanging obstructions. The French Quarter still hosts smaller walking parades, however, as well as unofficial and impromptu informal parades.

Tonight we will see four parades. They all follow the same route, one after the other. We have reserved bleacher seats for viewing the parades, complete with a private port-a-poty, which is a great bonus.

Parades are put on by groups called Krewes (pronounced crews). These societies vary greatly in how they handle their membership (some are secret and others are open). Krewe members pay annual dues that give them a position of a float and a costume. Float riders also have to buy the throws that they give out. Throws are beads, cups, doubloons (metal coins, usually embossed with the Krewes’ name and the parade theme), stuffed animals, frisbees and other plastic novelties. Not all Krewes hold parades. Many just throw balls or host other celebrations.

Tonight we will see the Knights of Hermes, Le Krewe d’Etat, the Krewe of Morphious and the Krewe of Muses (which had been rescheduled from last night due to the weather). Krewe members ride on floats, which are often designed to a specific theme. By law, Krewe members must be masked at all times when they are on the floats. In addition to the floats, there are marching bands ( a minimum of six in a major parade), walking groups, motorcycle groups, dance groups, police cars, fire trucks and military honor guards. No commercial advertising of any kind is allowed in the major parades.

Our rally organizers have hired three school buses to take us to the parades and other events. This is fortunate, as traffic in New Orleans is horrendous and parking is almost non-existent. Our bus drivers have a lot of experience and know all the streets, so they almost always manage to drop us off within a block or two of our destination and usually find a place to park within reasonable walking distance.

Airstreamers on the bus

We find our seats and soon afterwords, the parades start rolling by. One thing that has made an impression on me at the parades is how cheap plastic beads turn ordinarily civil and cordial people into someone who would trample their own Grandmother in order to grab the cheap plastic stuff that is thrown from the floats. I include myself in this group as well. Every once and a while you have to step back and remember that they are only beads and that you are going to go home with ten times more junk than you really need. Before every parade I hear people say something like “We got more than enough last night, so we are just going to watch the parades tonight”, but sooner or later, they are standing along the barricades screaming for more beads. It really IS fun!

Airstreamers waiting for beads

The highlight of tonight’s parades is the Krewe of Muses parade. The Muses are an all female Krewe that started parading 10 years ago. Their symbol is a woman’s high heeled shoe, and a lot of their throws have shoes in or on them. The prized throw from the Muses parade is a hand decorated high heel shoe. While we have not been fortunate enough to catch one of these, Ann managed to snag a hand decorated flip flop this year .

The parade theme each year has a decidedly female slant to it. This year’s theme was “The Muses Guide to Love and Romance”, and featured floats with titles such as: “Size Does Matter”, “My Eyes Are Up Here”, “Love Me, Love My Shoes”, ” Rise To The Occasion” (featuring a Viagra pill theme) and “Don’t Fear Commitment”. They also have walking groups, such as the Lady Godiva Riders and The Bearded Clams, that wear the same costumes every year.

A Lady Godiva Rider in the Muses parade

While things may be a bit risque, they are never obscene.

Wednesday, Feb 10

The WBCCI National Mardi Gras Rally is being held at the University of New Orleans Lakefront Arena. The campground there formally hosted FEMA trailers after the levee failures following hurricane Katrina devastated the area. The FEMA trailers are gone, temporarily replaced by 50 Airstream trailers & motor homes plus a bunch of other RVs attending a Good Sam Club rally.

Ann and I arrive around 6PM, having missed the 4PM Chili & Margarita get-together because of our delayed departure from Mobile. The chili was all gone, but fortunately the margaritas had not run out yet. We needed them after discovering the destruction inside our trailer caused by the horrible condition of I-10 in Louisiana. All sorts of stuff had bounced out of cabinets and off of shelves. Even the medicine cabinet had managed to open up and disgorge it’s contents. Fortunately, no liquids had spilled.

Before we started this trip, we were considering leaving the cats in the trailer while we drove. They curently travel in their travel cages, which are stacked up and belted down between Ann & I on the truck’s bench seat. Having them in the trailer would give as a bit more breathing room in the truck.

While we were in Birmingham, staying in the Walmart parking lot, I decided to move the trailer in order to get a bettwe Wi-Fi signal from a wings place in the strip mall. We left the cats in the trailer, and drove about 100 yards to a new spot. I clipped a curb with the trailer making one of the turns during the move, but it wasnt a huge bump. When we opened the trailer up, we didn’t find any cats. Lilly was cowering in their litter box and Gustav was found hiding under the covers of my bed, something he never does at home. I can just imagine what they would have been like if they had been in the trailer during that bad stretch of I-10. They would still be catatonic…

Wednesday night we got together with some of the folks we met at last year’s rally and reminisced about Vincent Saltaformaggio . Vince was a co-host of last year’s rally. He passed away due to a heart attack a few weeks after the end of that rally. Vince was the kind of person that even though you had only spent a small amount of time with him, you felt as if he and you had been best friends forever. He was a native of New Orleans and loved to show his city off during our bus rides. He also loved the New Orleans Saints and would have been beyond himself with joy in their winning of the Super Bowl this year.

Vince Saltaformaggio doing what he loved best...

Vince’s long time partner, Lonnie Carver somehow managed to pull herself together and put together this year’s rally. She was ably assisted by other members of the Greater New Orleans Unit and together they did a fantastic job. I know I speak for everyone who attended in saying “Thanks!”.

Thursday, Feb 11

After putting the trailer’s contents back in place, we attended the rally’s opening ceremony. The hosts opened with their own Mardi Gras parade, tossing beads and getting us in the Mardi Gras mood.

We then had a King Cake party. King Cakes are a ring shaped coffee cake with Purple, Green & Gold (the colors of Mardi Gras) icing. The cakes normally have a little plastic baby baked inside them (it used to be a dried bean, in the old days). Tradition has it that the person who gets the piece of cake with the baby in it has to throw the next party, or buy the next king cake, etc. In our case, there were four babies. When someone found one, they and their spouse/partner were appointed to the royal court for our “Krewe of Tin Cans” Mardi Gras Ball that is being held Sunday evening.

Then came the bad news. It was raining and the weather forecast predicted close to freezing temperatures that night, so the City had canceled the three parades we were going to see that night. Two of them had been rescheduled for other nights, and the third was canceled altogether. The good news is that the best of the three, the Muses parade, will be held after the three normally scheduled parades on Friday night, so we won’t miss that one.

Ann & I went to a local supermarket to stock up on necesities. While we were there, we found jumbo fresh raw locally caught shrimp for $4 a pound. Needless to say, we took them up on their offer!

They also had free samples of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum, complete with a live actor doing a great job of portraying the Captain, and several scantly clad female “buccaneers” to assist him.

Afterwords, we decided to go downtown for the evening, since the parades had been canceled. We got together with our friends from last year’s rally, Mike and Christine from Chicago, and went to a “club” called Vaughn’s to see the Jazz/Blues trumpet player Kermit Ruffins.

Vaughn’s is one of those places you would never go into unless you knew other people who had done so and survived. The door to the place is normally locked and to get in you have to knock and show your face in the window so they can check you out before they let you in. We arrived fairly early, so the place was fairly empty except for a few locals and a guy named Dave who was celebrating his birthday. He looked like he had been celebrating for quite a while, and we all instantly became his best friends. We claimed one of the few tables in the place and settled down, with a few of the local Abita beers, for a few hours of people watching.

Our new friend Dave

Around 9PM, the band members start to arrive, including Kermit Ruffins. Kermit strolled through the relatively small crowd, shaking everyone hand and thanking us for showing up. They start playing around 9:30PM. The set starts out with several Mardi Gras classics, plus, in honor of the Saints winning the Super Bowl, “When the Saints Go Marching In”. This won’t be the last time we hear this song during our stay, by any means. The set turns interesting when Kermit starts playing jazzed up versions of a lot of 70′s rock & pop songs. Other bands that we hear during the week do this as well, so I guess it’s a trend…

Kermit Ruffins playing at Vaughn's

By the end of the first set, the place was packed, so we decided to call it a night…

Thursday, Feb 4

It rained all day today. We had a relatively short drive to Birmingham, Alabama. We overnighted in a Walmart south of the city.

As I have posted elsewhere, many RVers like boondocking (camping without any water or electrical hookups) in Walmart parking lots. While the company doesn’t officially endorse it, most of the stores allow it. They are convenient, usually fairly safe, and you can go shopping for any items you might need.

Upon our arrival at Walmart, we were dismayed to find several puddles inside the Argosy. We had leaks. While this was not a surprise (I had planned to do some caulking once we hit Florida), it was still annoying!

Once we cleaned up the puddles and put down bowls to catch any future accumulation, we headed into the Walmart. Our shopping list was short: Wine, Cat Treats & getting our prescriptions refilled. A lot of full time RVers use Walmart for prescriptions because Walmarts are everywhere and any of their stores can refill your prescriptions. It was late in the afternoon when we arrived, so our prescriptions would not be ready until the next morning.

It rained, hard, all night. The cats were uneasy, due to the rain noise on the trailer roof, so they made sure we didn’t get a lot of sleep as well

Friday, Feb 5

The rain stopped around 7 AM. We fixed breakfast then picked up our prescriptions from the Walmart pharmacy.

We made a quick stop at the Salvation Army across the street (Ann LOVES thrift stores), where Ann found a couple of blouses and a few other “treasures”. We then hit the road for Florida.

Around 5PM we arrived at the Mystic Springs Airstream Park, a RV park for WBCCI (the Airstream Owner’s Club) members.

Saturday, Feb 6

First thing on the agenda for today was to wash and seal the trailer. The trailer was in BAD need of a bath, having been sitting in our driveway all winter. I managed to dig out my ladder from the front of the pickup’s bed (not an easy taks, considering the amount of stuff we have in there), and set to work. A few hours later, the task was complete.

A nice, clean Argosy

I then proceeded to caulk all of the know problem areas in hopes that our leaks will go away.

We made a quick trip into the local town, Century, FL, to check e-mail at the library and to pick up a few groceries. It turns out that they have a Piggly Wiggly store. I hadn’t seen one of these in years!

A Piggly Wiggly store

Sunday, Feb 6

Today we went into Pensacola, FL, to see the Museum at the Naval Air Station. It is a very interesting place, assuming you are into airplanes.

They have a LOT of planes there, both inside and out. One of the more interesting ones, to me, at least, was the plane that made the first trans Atlantic flight. It was an Air Force boat plane, known as the NC-4. The trip took 19 days, with multiple stops made along the way.

The NC-4. The first plane to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Sunday night the Saints beat the Colts in the Super Bowl, so all is well with the world…

Monday, Feb 7

We pack up and head to Mobile, Alabama. We are stopping in Mobile for several reasons, the main one being that we want to meet up with a friend of ours, Towner.

Towner is our “Mr. Fixit” in Cincinnati. He has put a new roof on our house, remodeled a bathroom and added a deck, amongst other things. Several years ago he decided to start wintering in Mobile, where he has family. He bought a “Fixer Upper” there and has been working on it, along with working paying gigs, every Winter since.

We pull into Meaher State Park, which sits on the East side of Mobile Bay, just outside the city of Mobile. It is a small, but well kept up campground. When we pulled in and asked for a site, the ranger said we would have to be in the “old” section. What that turned out to mean was they had recently remodelled the campground, adding a bunch of new full hookup paved sites. They kept the old camp sites, which were not paved and did not have water and sewer hook ups. We stayed in one of those, which was fine with us.

The "new" campground at Meaher State Park

We met Towner at a local restaurant, and had a few local beers while we talked.

Then it was off to downtown Mobile for the other reason we wanted to stop there: Mardi Gras!

Mobile claims to be the birth place of Mardi Gras in the United States. According to Wikipedia, it was started in 1703 by the French Catholics who lived there as a way to get the “excesses” out of their system before the start of Lent.

Nowadays, they have a week of parades, usually several every night. The ones we saw were relatively small, but were a lot of fun to watch.

A float in a Mobile, AL Mardi Gras parade

There were a lot of families with kids at the parade, and the parade participants threw out a lot of stuffed animals and other items kids would like.

Tuesday, Feb 8

The weather report says that there will be snow overnight tonight. We had originally planned to stay Tuesday evening at a Casino in Biloxi, MS, but decided that it would be wised to just head to New Orleans.

We take off from the State Park, intending to take US-90 along the Gulf coast. However, as soon as I pulled out onto the highway that fronts the Park, I hit the brakes to make the turn and the brake pedal sinks all the way to the floor! Fortunately, the trailer’s brakes were not effected by this, so they actually stopped the truck as I pulled to the side of the highway.

It appears that we have a broken brake line, as brake fluid sprays out over the right rear tire when the brake pedal is pressed. I call our RV roadside assistance service, Allstate’s RV Roadhelp, to arrange for a tow. We have had this service for years, but this was the first time I had to use it for RV reasons (it also covers your autos, and we have used the service for that purpose several times). The agent I talked to was very friendly and patient, as it took a while to find a tow service willing to take both the truck and the trailer. I highly recommend this service to other RVers.

A while later a large tow truck pulls up, hooks up to the fron to the truck, and proceeds to tow us, with the trailer still hooked up to the truck, to a local Ford dealer, Treadwell Ford. The dealership was located next to a Mall, so the tow truck driver dropped the trailer in the Mall parking lot and then took the truck to the dealership.

A couple of hours later we get the bad news: The brake kine between the master cylinder and the rear axle was in bad shape and needed to be replaced. This would not be finished by the end of the day, due to the need for parts that wouldn’t be in until the next morning.

We were getting ready to spend the night in the Mall parking lot (below freezing temps are predicted) when one of the dealership trucks pulls up and the service tech who was working on the truck pops out and proceeds to hook our trailer to their truck. They haul the trailer to the dealership parking lot, then run an extension cord out so we would be able to run our electric heater that night.

"Camping" at the Mobile Ford Dealership

The next afternoon we take off for New Orleans, $1000 poorer, but glad we managed to survive a “no brakes” situation as well as we had. Had it occurred the night before, when we were going 70 MPH on the freeway with no trailer to slow us down, then things could have turned much much worse…

On our way to the Joe Wheeler State park, we started to notice that many of the homes along the highway had what appeared to be underground buildings of some sort.

We figured that they were either left over bomb shelters from the cold war, root cellars or maybe tornado shelters (although I don’t think northern Alabama is a big tornado spot).

Well, on the way out of the state park, the next day, we noticed signs along the highway saying something like “Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Power Plant Evacuation Route“. We soon passed a sign pointing to the Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Power Plant.

Is that what those shelters are for, protection against a meltdown at the nuclear plant?

Unfortunately, it was pouring down rain and there was no room to pull over, so no photos….

Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010

Ann wakes up at 4:30AM and starts puttering around getting the last of our stuff packed. I wake up soon after.

Since this is a trial run for our stay at the Grand Canyon this Summer, we are packing as much food as possible. Since we will be 3 hours away from a decent grocery store, we want to limit the number of trips. This means we need to figure out where (how?) we will put all of the stuff.

After packing, unloading then re-packing the truck several times, we load up the cats and hit the road.

The goal is to limit each day’s driving to around 200 miles. That gives us time to enjoy the trip, as opposed to the marathon driving we have done in the past. We can actually take time in the AM to eat breakfast and ease into the day. It also means that the cats aren’t caged up for an extended period of time. They currently ride, in their travel cages, in the front seat of the truck, between Ann & I. We plan to introduce them to riding in the trailer later in the trip (maybe).

200 miles a day also works well because that is how far I can get on a tank of gas towing the trailer (10 MPG   ).

Tonight we are staying at a KOA in Horse Cave, KY, near Mammoth Cave National Park. We had hoped to de-winterize the trailer’s plumbing at this stop, but they have not turned on the water at the sites yet, so that will have to wait, for now.

Horse Cave KY KOA

When we remodeled the trailer, we put down laminate flooring. Underneath that are radiant heating pads, that keep the floor warm. They run on 110V AC, so we can only use them when we have electric hookups, which we do at the KOA. Between the floor heaters and a small electric space heater, we stay nice and warm.

Ann also bought electric blankets for our beds, which the cat’s enjoyed very much!

Gustav & Lilly enjoying the electric blanket

Wednesday, Feb 3, 2010

We pack up and head further South. We make a stop at the Camping World store in Bowling Green, KY as well as the Gander Mtn. store next door. We were really proud of ourselves in getting out of both stores and spending less than $25. That has to be a new record!

The next stop is a Flying J Truck Stop to fill the Propane tanks.

The trip through Nashville was fairly painless. Traffic and drivers there tend to be a bit aggressive. Since I normally drive around 60 mph when pulling the trailer, I usually don’t have to worry about passing, the other folks have to worry about passing me.  However, it can be “interesting” when I do need to change lanes in heavy traffic. My process is to turn on the turn signals and if I can’t change lanes right away, I wait until the folks behind me had time to see the turn signals, the slowly change lanes. I figure that they had time to see the signals. Ann says that we have the “right of weight”

We stop at the Alabama welcome center on I-65 and get information on the Alabama State Parks. Our prior experience with Alabama State Park campgrounds have been very positive, so we pick one out about an hour away.

Alabama Welcome Center, I-65 Southbound at the Tennessee border

The park, Joe Wheeler State Park, is named after Joseph Wheeler, who was (according to Wikipedia) an American military commander and politician. He has the rare distinction of serving as a general during war time for two opposing forces: first as a noted cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and later as a general in the United States Army during both the Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War near the turn of the century.

The park is on a huge lake and has a boat launch, golf course, lodge, cabins and a campground. The campground is very nice, and it only cost $21 (plus tax) a night for full hookups. We definitely recommend it.

The park is located about 25 miles West of Athens, AL. I mentioned that we should stop and see REM and the B-52′s, but Ann reminded me that they were from Athens, Georgia, not Alabama….

We de-winterized the trailer this evening, finding only a man-made leak (where I had left a cap off), and also discovering that I had wired the water pump backwards when I had worked on the new floor. Instead of pumping water, it blows bubbles into the water tank. Something ELSE to work on when we get to Florida…

Thursday, Feb 4th, 2010

We woke up this morning to a light rain. We were a bit lazy getting going today, but fortunately we only have 100 miles to drive today. Will will be Wal-Marting it tonight South of Birmingham, AL.

I am currently typing this at a Panera Bread in Decatur, AL For the price of a coffee we get a warm place to hook up to the Internet.

Wheeler Lake, as seen from the State Park (in the rain)