A short 2-1/2 hour drive got us to the final stop in the first leg of our trip. Angie will lay over with the trailer and dogs in the company of a couple of her closest friends from her Navy days - Carri and Tracy. Carri is hosting us in her beautiful home there. After relaxing for a couple of nights, Hank will board a plane for LA to help Madeline pack up after final exams at Chapman and drive her Subaru station wagon to Seattle.
We enjoyed pizza and beer with Carri and played with the dogs at the dog park. After a light dinner, we watched half of "Death on the Nile" - a slickly produced Agatha Christie tale, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Made it to the discovery of the body before turning in from exhaustion.
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Today's drive took us over two-lane country roads, past corn fields and pastures to a rural spot on the banks of the Suwanee River. We stayed at the home of retired Marine who is a superhost with Boondockers Welcome; the campsite featured full hook-ups and a private fenced yard adjacent to the hosts shop. The shop included a spacious and spotless three-quarter bath for our use.
The dogs were able to swim in a back eddy of the river. A soft-shell turtle showed up to join the fun! Later we visited with the host and his sweetheart on their riverside floating dock below one of the few high-bank properties we saw. The river depth only days before had been too high to allow access to the dock The river is home to large (100-pound-plus) sturgeon and catfish. Boats and jet skis occassionally collide with the sturgeon, causing damage to boats and passengers. In addition to being large, the sturgeon have a very hard exoskeleton. We also learned how our hosts bait hooks with Ivory soap to catch catfish on static lines. Apparently, the poor-sighted catfish are attracted by the scent of the soap. A pleasant drive eastbound on I-10 took us to a Navy base campground on a bay of Panama City Beach. Upon entering the base, we were greeted by a herd of black-tail deer.
The dogs got to romp and play on grass and in the bay. We enjoyed a quick dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant before returning home to watch a good Christian film, "Miracles From Heaven", on our DVD player. We awoke to a beautiful sunrise. Had breakfast in town and took the dogs to a sugary sand dog beach to play in the water before hitting the road again. A rest day to enjoy the dog beach and catch up on our blog. After updating the blog, we were stymied by a web hosting outage, which delayed publication by several days. Enjoyed good food and drinks at Shaggy's bayside deck. The deck was dog friendly. Streak and Charlie were actually treated better than we humans. They even got served a chicken and rice platter.
Near our campground, at the end of the Park's peninsula, stood Fort Pickens built in 1834 - one of forts three forts that guarded the entrance to Pensacola Harbor. Fort Pickens was occupied by Union soldiers during the Civil War. There were many artillery battles between the three forts and between the forts and ships. We toured the massive complex's tunnels and ramparts while the dogs waited outside in the shade. We learned that Geronomo and many other Apaches were imprisoned at this site for many years before being transferred to Fort Sill, OK. We enjoyed a beautiful drive across rolling hills, low plains and river deltas to arrive at Pensacola, where we camped in the National Seashore park. White, sugary sand! Turquoise Water!
We took the dogs to a beach and they wore themselves out. Charlie chased a frisbee through the surf while Streak herded a kite. They attracted a lot of attention and admiration, both at the beach, then later on the deck of the restaurant where we enjoyed a sunset meal and cocktails. We had early cafe au lait and beignet at Cafe du Monde. Angie was fascinated by St. Peter's Cathedral and took a lot of great pictures. We strolled the Riverfront, which was quite hot in early morning direct sunlight. So we sought a shady refuge, WiFi and water for the dogs. We had a delicious Greek omelet at a sidewalk cafe and rehydrated the animals before returning to the RV Park, where we swam in the pool and worked on the blog while doing laundry.
The pool was small but at a perfect temperature to refresh ourselves. This was, by far, the best RV Resort we have stayed in. Great facilities, great location. We got a lot of steps in, walking back and forth from the French Quarter. We had an early dinner at the rooftop restaurant at Mambos. Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, so we carried a doggie bag to the early show at Preservation Hall. What a unique experience! A five-piece band played for a crowd of 80 in a tiny unairconditioned room with bench seating and standing room. Twenty people had to stand during the 60-minute show. We heard great music and stories. The pianist was the best Hank had ever seen. All the solos were impressive. Bourbon Street was quite a bit more crowded and the revelers were more wild. Quite a bit of Twerking going on. Many more buskers, too, offering $20 photos with large pythons, perfoming percussion performances and selling shots. We saw a really good country band fronted by Tony Ray Thompson, a talented guitarist with a great, deep voice. They had a good fiddle player, too. The Bourbon O club had a unique jazz performance with a saxophone-playing front man who was so engaging and entertaining, he could have been a ring leader at a circus. They also featured an adorable middle-aged asian woman who occassionally danced solo on the stage, showing off flapper and ballet moves. At one point, the front man and the asian woman did some impressive West Coast Swing dancing together. Really fun. Angie loves the Pims Cup drinks they make there, too. There was a dramatic lightning an thunderstorm last night. We got to enjoy the dramatic build-up on our walk home. We comfortable inside our trailer when the deluge hit. Two nights on Bourbon Street was plenty for us. After a while, the smell of garbage, the commercialism and the signs of overindulgence get to be a bit much. The diversity of the people on the street was delightful and fitting with the Cajun and Creole past of this region. Today, we are off to the gulf coast of Florida. Angie is excited for the dogs to be able to swim in the ocean for the first time on this trip. Drove across Lake Pontchartrain on the longest continuous bridge over water in the world - 24 miles. It was a little bumpy as the trailer crossed each pavement seam, but it was fun to see the city skyline looming in the distance and gradually growing larger. Our campground was a half-mile from Bourbon Street.
As soon as we were situated in our site, we walked to a restaurant for a late afternoon lunch. The restaurant featured Cajun bloody marys. The food was really good - grilled redfish with crawfish sauce, chicken and sausage gumbo, red beans and rice, mustard greens. Yum! Then we walked across Decatur Street to the River Walk. We enjoyed drinks at the spacious interior courtyard at Pat O'Briens. Live music started early. We bounced back and forth between a really good metal band that played all the classics and a jazz bar at the Bourbon O Hotel. Amazing talent playing for no cover charge - just tips. Drinks were understandably expensive, though. Wednesday night was not very crowded or rowdy. There was plenty of room on the dance floor. We drove across eastern Texas and a piece of Lousiana before crossing the Mississippi River into Natchez. Being in Louisiana reminded Hank of his favorite song from junior high school, "Amos Moses", released by Jerry Reed in 1970.
Another Harvest Host site - an antebellum mansion called "Auburn" was our camp site for the night. Our tour was led by a retired volunteer, Clark, a native of Gettysburg, PA. We learned that the house was built im 1811 by Lyman Harding, an attorney from New York, who became the first attorney general of Mississippi. After Harding, who was childless, died, the home was owned by several generations of wealthy Duncan's from Philiadelphia. The Duncans owned and operated several plantations in the area. Because these Duncans were wealthy and educated at Yale, Hank suspects they were descended from loyalist, lowland Duncans, rather than close relatives of his Scots Irish ancestors who settled in the mountains of western Virginia in the 18th century. After touring Auburn, we drove 15 minutes to the home of Kenny and Karen Jo Smith. Karen is one of Hank's oldest friends, dating back to freshman year in high school. The Smith's live on a private, sloped, 3-acre lot, 2 miles down a one-lane county road from the highway. They have a guest house, a shop and large honey bee yard on their land, which borders a pond. The dogs loved roaming around the property as we walked. The dogs rested in the Smith's air conditioned home while the four of us travelled to a restaurant in the historic "Under-the-Hill" neighborhood on the banks of the Mississippi River. This colorful neighborhood was once a rough and tumble sailors waterfront, but is now the home of two nice restaurants and a classic tavern that claims to have been continuously operating since the earliest days of Natchez. Judging from the photos and artifacts that fill its walls, it's easy to believe that claim. Riverboats still moor on the waterfront, but now, they are mostly steel-hulled and diesel powered, though some of them are replicas of the classic sternwheels. We watched a beautiful sunset over the river as we enjoyed our dinner of catfish tacos and steak salad. It cooled off nicely in the evening. No air conditioning needed! More rolling green hills on today's drive. Texas has good freeways! We had a bit of a navigation issue, which resulted in us circling Gladewater before getting directed via phone to the home of John Rodriguez, son of Ralph and Jean, Hank's aunt and uncle by marriage. Ralph and Jean were also the organizers and hosts of Hank's mother's first reunion with her seven children, three of whom had been estranged prior to the reunion.
This year will be the 30th anniversary of these reunions. Hank's mother Nettie died one week after the sixth reunion. Those reunions were always the highlight of her year. Her children have carried on with this annual events almost every year since. This year's landmark event is on our itinerary June 25th in Radford, Va. John and his wife Cathy have a shady, 9-acre ranch in Gladewater, where they live with two horses, two donkeys, four dogs and three cats. After a chicken dinner and strawberry shortcake dessert, John helped us fire up our generator for the first time, so we could cool the trailer and get a good nights sleep. The generator ran until 3:30 am, when it ran out of fuel. It was Angie's best night of sleep on the trip to date. We celebrated Mothers Day at Grace Church in Solado. We drove an hour to Austin to see some live blues in the backyard of Oakwood BBQ and Beer Garden. It was a casual, shady venue that was kid- and dog-friendly. Saw one of the best lead guitarists I had ever seen. The band leader, Larry Harris, was a great storyteller, who explained the origin of each of his original songs.
Angie and I had to move our feet to such great music, so we started dancing on the bare dirt yard. Larry called us his "Oakwood dancers". We spoke to him at set break. He had met Stevie Ray Vaughn, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. He gave us a free CD. Our bartender, Josh, was from Portland, OR. He explained to us that no one in Texas recycles. To exercise and cool the dogs off, we drove to the Lady Bird Trail along the river near the University of Texas. Hundreds of students were floating and paddling in the river. We saw one group of several dozen of them all moored together in the center of the river. I think Madeline would like this school! |