Today was a work day. The weather was nice, warm with a good breeze. Tyler and Maggie did school work. There was a bike ride to the grocery store. Maggie played with a very well trained dog.
Paul and Stephanie went to a lot of meetings and worked on work projects.
I don't think we even bothered to take any interesting pictures. Sometimes you just need to get stuff done and you are in a nice place to do it.
Picking up on the current day and working both forward and backwards as it is day 242 and I am on day ~10 working backwards.
We stayed overnight at the Lake Charles East KOA, which was a no-frills campground, which is what we needed for a stop. Had dinner and had a fairly early night after roughly four hour total travel from New Orleans. Louisiana has a lot of wet land. We saw a fair bit of Hurricane damage.
We broke camp by 10.30 and headed through Houston. Along the way we decided that maybe Sam's Club for petrol wasn't a horrible idea to add to the cheaper fuel arsenal. While I was looking, I found a $45 gift card offer from Sam's which would make the Membership roughly free. And if that didn't work for some reason, it was 5 tanks to profit. And there isn't a Costco everywhere you need one.
Most of the trip I spent trying to figure out where to stay next few days while juggling visiting friends and relatives and figuring out where everyone is located. AllStays again is the winner app.
We have two days at the next stop, so hopefully will get some work and school work done as well as visiting a Great Aunt in San Antonio.
After a nice breakfast we left the New Orleans RV Resort exactly at checkout (11 AM) and headed to Costco to get gas and have an extended shopping excursion while we met my friend Mordi from grad school (his undergrad).
We had sort of pinged each other over the years but not had an extensive conversation. Ironically roughly the year he graduated was the year I hurt my back and he was super helpful in finding me a local surgeon (as he grew up in La Jolla) and was important in getting me fixed then. Now 30 years later its my neck and I'm about in as bad a shape as then....
We had a fantastic lunch at Tal's Hummis and tried to sort of catch up on three decades of activity. At least it was a good attempt! We got to meet each other's families and discover that between the four adults, at least, we had a lot of nibbling at the edges of each other's professional activity which was very cool. Also some catching up on what we had heard from other alumni friends.
Mordi had long ago sent us a box of Mardi Gras beads when the kids were little and they are still floating around the house and getting used from time to time for dress up or costumes.
After lunch we Lyfted back (Uber was congested), enjoyed seeing another neighborhood and the great architecture along the boulevard. Then we finished our shopping at Costco. And then it was time to say goodbye to New Orleans and start the treck to Texas!
Today is Hop-on-Hop off Bus day. Since Paul can\"t walk very far, we figured this was the only way we were going to get to see the city. Happily the main office and stop 5 was a reasonable walk from the RV park, so after a quick hot tub to get limbered up (mostly Paul) we made the 10.30 bus. (Its a 1.5 hour tour not counting getting off, so we figured that was about right.)
The tour went thorough the French Quarter, the Garden District, Downtown, the Irish Canal, and the borders of a few other neighborhoods. It was only the second day that the bus tour was up and running which was lucky for us. You could tell, the tree libs kept hitting the bus since it hadn't trimmed them in a year...
The view from the top of the double decker bus was great, you could see down the side streets. I won\"t recount the history here (at least now) but we learned a lot about the city. We went through the site of the 1984 World\"s Fair which was the last time I was in New Orleans. It was the rundown part of town then, now the trendy old warehouse turned into expensive loft condos area now. My family took the train from St Louis to go to the fair. Apparently they are going to try and increase the train service again now...
Then back on the bus to finish our tour. As my son had managed not to pack any nice pants, and we had noticed the outlet mall on the bus tour, we went back to achieve that shopping chore. Amazingly we found some that fit fairly painlessly. And a we got to gaze at the mighty Mississippi, which we had last seen when it was a fairly short crossing by bridge that we almost missed noticing.
Our RV site came with a gazebo so we made good use of it for dinner and then crashed.
We left the KOA near the airport for our Harvest Host Brewery stop. It had been suggested by the KOA that we stop at the Dot's Dinner just down the street (which we discovered was owned by the same family that had the KOA) and it being a classic dinner and we were hungry, seemed like a good plan.
It was pretty much everything we expected, service was friendly, food was classic dinner, ambience was the same. As a bonus we profitably used the time until we could check in at our next spot.
Then we headed for our Harvest Host, Faubourg Brewing Co., a brewery by the river, and it turned out near the Folger's Coffee plant (smelled great!). It was a large brewery, big tasting room, big outside venue for music, nice big parking lot with an RV section. Two downsides, Verizon had no bars of data, and the brewery wifi was down, due to storms. As we had homework and work to do, that wasn't not going to do it. Also, despite being told we could get in and out (At least for a an Uber after 8 PM) but we could not see how that worked. So we moved to plan B/C which turned out to be the expensive RV Resort in the French quarter. That turned out to be the place we wanted to be as it was close to everything and Paul's mobility was pretty limited.
After getting set up, we made reservations at Broussard's, a classic New Orleans restaurant where we made sure we had the full Cajun cuisine treatment. The food was excellent, it was a bit cold for the courtyard but the dining room was very fancy.
Afterwards we walked down Bourbon Street, found both the hotel that my parents and I stayed at when we visited for the World's Fair and Pat O'Brian's where my parents bought me my first (legal purchased) drink. A hurricane. They did not appear to be open when we walked by (as in just closed).
So we continued along Bourbon Street, which was full of people doing what people do on Bourbon Street which slightly scandalized the children, not being used to Fraternity Row about midnight. We went along about 4-5 blocks to soak up the ambience. Then the kids said we could go home, anytime.
As I was still hobbling along on my walking stick dodging drunk people, I, at about block 5 said, okay, time to call the Uber. We called, no Uber. Lyft! I said. No Lyft. Well I said, if we get off of Bourbon Street a few blocks we will have more luck....
5 blocks toward the RV park and still nothing. 10 blocks still nothing, well, maybe in 21 minutes. At this point, we were only 0.3 miles or so from the RV park, and I declared that I was not too tired to keep going. Maggie was providing stability on my left and I had my walking stick on my right. So what if I was pretty much still using a walker a week or two ago, what's a few more blocks.
It took a while but we passed the Covenant House that I had seen earlier, and the police station, and the train station, and I knew we were kind of close, then I saw the building under construction next to us and we were home free.
It was after 11, and that was probably as far as I had walked in the last month in total in an evening, but there we go! Success!! A great evening.
Having received grudging clearance from my Neurologist to continue the trip, and a welcome ride to the airport from a friend, Tyler and I hop a plane from Reno to New Orleans. The wheel chair drivers were very nice, Southwest was great about getting me on the plane. The trip passed without much incident. We arrived at the shiny new New Orleans airport, got our Uber to the KOA I found near the airport, and after three weeks had a family reunion.
We ordered pizza. and got ready for our big adventure in New Orleans.
This is a stub, Stephanie and Maggie had three weeks traveling without the author.
I'll have to recreate this section this from their Facebook posts. But not today.
