The Road Less Traveled

After Clarksville Tennessee we got on US41 to the north and headed through Kentucky and then Indiana. We landed at the KOA in Terre Haute where we have stayed several times. This is another of the stops on the "Anniversary Tour" for the Flying Scotsman as we stayed at this park exactly 10 years earlier in 2007.

 

The barn is a bit shabbier than ten years ago but the donkeys looked the same ... I'll have to write the owners and see if they really are the same guys or not. The first post from ten years ago has a picture of them near the same barn ... but I'm not good at recognizing a burro I've met before!

At the KOA we had a really heavy rain ... sometimes it is hard to talk or listen when the rain is pounding the roof of our tin can house.

But here it is below. This is the ideal road experience. By staying on the two lane roads we had a smooth, slow ride where we could look at the countryside. The part of 41 in Indiana was really surprising as we were used to the flat cornfields but this stretch was winding with beautiful hills and valleys in the early spring.

The winds were pretty strong though and when we got up onto the higher flat pieces with the semis coming by a piece of decorative molding on the roof edge began to come off and really pound the top of the bus.

After crossing into Michigan on the 27th of April on another 200 plus mile trip we picked the KOA located in Covert Michigan. While not near the beach like South Haven it is a large park surrounded by woods and lakes. The sites are level gravel and the host lent me a ladder to cut and rip off the offending piece of molding. The bad part about the place was some folks who were allowed to come into the park about midnight, set up, and began to party till 3am ... won't be back to that place!

Then on the 28th across Michigan to stay at Port Huron until our Customs Nexus interview and Jo-Anne's allergy shot on Monday the first of May.

Well ... sort of. We decided to go eastward across Michigan on highway 21from Ionia and at a lunch stop in Owasso we decided to call the KOA in Port Huron and let them know we were coming ... oooops. They rather rudely told us they wouldn't be open until Monday the first and the same was with the other KOA in Port Huron .... aaah ... what to do now.

We got out the big Good Sam bible and started to call all the parks within 40 miles of Port Huron. Finally we came across the Lake Huron Campground in Port Sanilac which is about 30 miles north of Port Huron.

Luckily the park has turned out to be quite nice and the little town of Port Sanilac is very attractive. Above is their restored lighthouse and the lake is just beyond. We didn't do much walking as the weather is about 40 degrees and a very strong north wind making the wind chill pretty near freezing.

It's now Saturday night and we'll talk more about the RV park and our experience here in the next post.

 

Rolling North

 

After our great New Orleans stay we rolled north to the Yogi On The Lake park in Pelehatchie Mississippi. The place is just to the east of Jackson and we have been here before. A nice park but the sites vary widely. Some are nice hard gravel and some are mushy clay under a little stone. No one was here so after experimentation we settled in site 221 which was level ... yup we did get stuck in the mud and yup we had to unhook the car to get the 20 tons to move backwards out of the mire.

 

 

But once in the site it was a quiet and very pretty night ... when the latest repair was finished.

Because our generator wouldn't come on to supply power we needed a new transfer switch. On Sunday morning just coming out of New Orleans we stopped by a Camping World near Hammond in a little town called Pumpkin Center ... no kidding.

While the name of their town is not normal they had the part we needed and we paid the parts guy and went up to stay with Yogi for the night. But first I had to install the new transfer box.

The caption here is, "OK, do I use the twirly-clicky thing or the yanky-whacky thing?"

Anyway after about an hour of hooking up all the connections and taking the old fried box to the dumpster, we had pure gen and shore power again ... RV life at its finest.

The stay at Yogi was great right on the lake with birds and extreme quiet and our evening walk was super. Next morning off north but to fuel up first. The highway fuel at Love's or Pilot was about $2.65 but if you stopped at Joe's joint off the freeway it was quite a bit less. Let's see a hundred gallons for .40 a gallon less ... that's $40 saved for this day's run ... wow.

After we left Pelahatchie and were happily running down the road at 70 MPH this thing walked right up the windshield from the bottom to top ... nothing you can do ... no place to pull over ...

When we hit a rest stop I gassed the front window area with some Raid and by the time we landed at Clarksville the thing had succumbed to the fumes ... what about us.

We did arrive in Clarksville Tennessee on the 25th at the Clarksville RV Park which is again highly rated but not up to the ratings. This is an old KOA that lost its support and gone on their own with just a coat of paint and a lot of hope.

Again Good Sam really needs to look at their exaggerated ratings of places like this. Sure it was a nice park for one nite on the road but nothing else ... definitely not a top rated place. Gravel sites and close neighbors without much else ...

Ten Years and Nawlins!

 

OK, the ten year part first. Ten years ago this week started our RV adventure. We bought the first motorhome in late March, sold our house in New Braunfels and then on the 18th of April 2007 Bruce retired after 40 years with the Air Force and we started out on this wonderful North American RV tour. Below is one of the first pics from 10 years ago as we neared Terre Haute Indiana and ironically that will be our next stop on the current trip in a couple of days.

 

In the 10 years we have gone over 90,000 miles and stayed at close to 300 different RV parks all documented here with comment and mainly good pictures.

 



But back to New Orleans. We have been coming to this fabulous city for about 44 years and it never seems to change nor lose its attraction. Beautiful people, super food, fantastic history, and the ambiance of Paris without the plane trip.

We stayed right in the French Quarter at the RV park and walked down to Jackson Square where this magnificent church dominates the square. Of course we had the obligatory beignets including some peach filled ones and wandered the shops. We went over to the old Jax brewery which 10 years ago was a bustling shopping center with a hundred shops ... not today ... after the last hurricane that hit the place it never recovered and is almost vacant.

We went back in the evening to have a bite at Muriel's on the square. This place is wonderful. Below is a pic from their website of the front of the restaurant. We went early as we have before and had a drink in their bar which is pure southern itself; cozy but elegant in a courtyard setting.

Then dinner on the white linen from a professional wait staff. We each had a three course menu. Mine started with some seafood crepes which were great and then I had their panko crusted Drum entrée which was excellent.

But Jo-Anne's pork chop was the star of the meal. With the wine sauce and spinach it was really great and she actually let me sneak a bite!

Dessert was cheesecake, ice cream, and crème brulee ...

 

Off tomorrow to points north and maybe walk more and eat less, eh!

Hot Ride

 

I'll get to the hot part in a minute but first more abut the last couple of days. Wednesday evening we had dinner with more old friends, Greg and Char, from missile duty and Tucson days. We used to visit them in the Dayton area, but now they are retired and San Antonio is home.

 

So on the 20th we unhooked from New Braunfels and decided to take the road less traveled again. That would be east to Gonzales then highway 111 out of there to Galveston ... really neat ride except for the "love bugs."

 

These black things really mushed up the bus and they dry quickly into a hard paste that took about an hour to wash and scrape off.

 



After a really nice trip through the southeast part of Texas we came up on Galveston Island from the west and landed at the Jamaica RV park about midway up the island. Below you can see the Gulf out in front of the RV and it was a quick walk to the beach.

OK, the hot part. About an hour before we landed in Galveston we noticed the RV getting hotter inside. We try to use the dash AC but we've had problems with it leaking and in a day's trip it normally needs a recharge, and really it wasn't designed to cool the whole bus on a hot day.

Our normal reaction is to turn on the generator and then let the roof air units do their work. OOOh. Hmmm. Generator is on but no power. Check everything possible. Hotter and hotter as the outside air is about 83 and 90%. Arrived in Jamaica Beach and quickly hooked up the shore power and everything works fine .... cool air.

We took a stroll that evening and the wildlife along the beach was great with pelicans and all kinds of sea birds.

The next morning we took off on what we knew would be hot and long day to New Orleans. We got going about 9 and went through Galveston proper and past the Galvez Hotel where we stayed many years ago.

And then decided to take the ferry across to the Bolivar Peninsula rather than slog through Houston. About an hour wait for the free ferry while I got a chance to troubleshoot our non-functioning generator. Hot and getting hotter. The ferry trip was about 20 minutes, but the trip planner (me) didn't realize that New Orleans was really about 400 miles from Galveston ... ooops.

So by the time we got across the ferry at about 10 am it took another 6 very hot and long hours for the old guys to get to New Orleans.

There was a massive 18 wheeler accident near Crowley, then Baton Rouge with its gross traffic jams, and then finally and slowly creeping into New Orleans at about 5:30 ... very tired and very hot with no air. But above is why we are here with the Flying Scotsman in the foreground and the Big Easy in the background .... this is it!! Plugged in and cool air and happy hour ... yea!

Summer's Here and the Flying Scotsman is Loose!

 

On the 13th of April we unhooked the roving machine from its mooring in Carrollton and headed south; eventually to arrive in Canada on the 1st of May. Below is the Bandit as we are moving at 70MPH through Dallas. Once the bus starts to move he moves into his safe house between the captains chairs up front and will sleep until the banging, roaring, bumping machine comes to a halt for the mid-morning potty break ... cool cat!

 

After a Camping World stop in Burleson and 190 miles later we landed in Bryan again and hooked up with our Aggieland owner/friend Chuck. In Bryan we enjoyed a couple of days with Bruce's mom and Rich and Kerry. It was great to see Mom and enjoy as much time with her as possible as we will be gone to the norhland until October.

On the 17th we left Bryan and headed southwest for 145 miles on highway 21 toward New Braunfels where we had lived for almost 8 years until retiring from the Air Force in 2007. We have stayed at the Hill Country resort many times so we chose it again. The feeling for the place is that they have really gone into the park model cabins and are discouraging the RV business. The sites are old and not maintained at all; sad in this time of many folks looking for a first class RV park in this heavily tourist area.

While in the area we decided to go out to the Canyon Lake and Sattler area to see our old friends Pat and Harvey Hueter at their gorgeous piece of property on the Guadalupe. We enjoyed a drink on the back porch overlooking a quarter mile of Guadalupe river frontage and also shared our drinks with a couple of deer which had come up to the house to feed.

Bruce and Harvey had been helicopter pilots at the same time in Vietnam and Pat and Jo-Anne are old buddies dating back to high school days in Canada in the military. Super memories and a lot of great talk!

The next morning we had to partake in what was a weekend ritual when we lived in the area; eggs Benedicts at Able's Diner in Schertz. For many years the diner was in a small store front of white cinder block but about two years ago they moved to new digs just down I-35.

We are always fearful of change to the old stuff we remember but were rewarded with the same ambiance and super bennies that have continued to make the place famous ... I mean, look at these things!

Tonight we'll go out with more old friends and then off down the road tomorrow for places known and unknown.