April 17-19 New Orleans, LA – Yogi Bear’s Jellystone RV Park - Hammond, LA

The kid’s have been eagerly awaiting this stop. As the name would imply, the Jellystone RV Park is geared toward kids. They have several pools, a putt-putt golf course, paddle boats, an arcade, lots of playground toys and plenty of paths for scooter riding. Since we planned to stay here a few days, we decided that the extras were important.

So we pull in to our RV site the first night and quickly size things up before pulling out to go get dinner. While there a stray dog shows up and the kid’s quickly take a liking to him. Before I know it they’ve named him Buddy. I try to run him off before jumping back in the RV. We pull out and the dog follows us out onto the main road running alongside us before we speed away. We had dinner at Don’s Seafood in Hammond sampling boiled crawfish, fried catfish, crawfish etouffee, seafood gumbo and hush puppies. The food was fantastic and the owner paid us a visit during dinner and recommended a couple local sights. After dinner we return to our site and the dog is there waiting for us. He spent the night under our RV. We’re up early the next morning and as I’m returning from the showers I see the Animal Control Officer stopped next to our RV. Help has arrived!! As I approach our site animal control pulls away leaving Buddy behind. You guessed it - Nancy had claimed the dog.  A trip to the vet the next day dashed my hopes that he would be microchipped and reunited with his owner. It turns out that Buddy is a Catahoula/hound dog mix - evidently this is the official Louisiana state dog. Not exactly the souvenir I had in mind but he’s friendly, has a good temperament and appears to be a good traveler.

The next couple of days were spent sightseeing and relaxing. I had some work to do and Jim did some maintenance on the RV. We did take time out one afternoon to visit Kliebert’s Turtle and Alligator Farm. These folks bill themselves as “The Original Swamp People” and having visited the place I wouldn’t question the claim. Harvey started his “farm” in the mid-50’s with 250 newly hatched American Alligators. Over the years only 8 have died leaving them with roughly 200 female and 42 male breeding stock all 55 years of age. Their largest is 19’ long and weighs around 2000 pounds. We were able to see the 3^rd largest. His name is Krush – he’s 16.5 feet and 1750 pounds. The thing is absolutely massive. He put on a pretty good performance for us once our tour guide got him riled up. They collect the eggs each year and raise the young until 7 years of age when they harvest them for meat and hides. The pictures you see below feature a 7 year old alligator about 7’ long. The farm is also home to 30,000 plus turtles. They collect the eggs layed during the spring and ship over 1 million hatchlings overseas throughout the year. We all loved the tour here. James and Zach both purchased alligator heads from the gift shop. These beauties are sure to warrant prominent placement in their bedroom back home. While in Hammond we met up with Randy and Kim Wagner. Kim is Sondra’s second oldest daughter (see entry for April 11) and the last time I saw her I was a toddler. We enjoyed our visit with them as we dined at Don’s Seafood for the second night in a row.

Have you ever heard of a daiquiri drive-thru? Neither had I until I got to Louisiana. As we’re making our way around Hammond I saw a number of these little shops. Upon closer inspection it turns out they do exactly what you might think they do. Add this to the list of cultural experiences that we indulged in while in town. The place we visited boasted of having daiquiri’s spiked with 190 proof everclear. Evidently this is all legal as long as you don’t remove the paper topper from the straw that they place in the drink until you’re parked. Wonders never cease. Jim and I installed a backup camera in the RV friday morning and the kids made the most of their last day in Jellystone Park. We were packed up by mid-afternoon and after saying goodbye to the office staff who had taken a liking to the kids we set out for New Orleans.

Dinner with Randy and Kim @ Don's Seafood in Hammond

Tired kids - see Buddy peeking his head out from Elisabeth's bed at the bottom of the picture.





Uncle Jim alligator wrestling

The kids holding a 7 footer

Yes this one is alive...

April 16 – Lafayette/Baton Rouge, LA – Belle of Baton Rouge Casino

We left Round Top around noon and made our way toward Louisiana. Nancy, in particular, has been eagerly anticipating this part of our journey. We plan to forgo eating- in, which we’ve done for most of our trip and will, instead, partake in the local cuisine. Crawfish is in season and we stopped in Lafayette for dinner at Louisiana Crawfish Time. We spent the night in the parking lot of the Belle of Baton Rouge Casino  - I think they thought we were going to spend more than $3 for a cup of coffee - a stone’s throw from a 40’ dike alongside the Mississippi River. The pictures below tell the story.

On our way towards the New Orleans area the next day we visited Oak Alley Plantation. This is in an area along the Mississippi called Plantation Row where, at one time, sugar cane plantations ined both sides of the river. Oak Alley was beautiful. We toured the main house which was built in the 1830’s when the plantation was originally established. One of the pictures below is taken from the second story veranda looking out toward the river. There are a total of 28 300 year old oak trees spaced 80 feet apart that line the walk out to the river. Looking through the oaks, you can see the river dike. This is a very cook piece of history and it’s still a working farm today as a portion of the plantations 1200 acres is still planted to sugar cane.

Boiled crawfish



Lucas playing with the food

A fight to the death - the hostess brought some live crawfish out to show the kids



Oak Alley Plantation main house





View toward the Mississippi from the 2nd story veranda



Nancy and Ellisabeth strolling through the gardens



April 14-15 – Round Top, TX – Harold and Larise Charlson

Round Top is an hour or so east of Austin and is best known for its twice yearly antique weekends. On these weekends in April and October the town swells from a population of 90 to 100,000+. Harold and Larry are two of Round Top’s 90 permanent residents. Harold is my mom’s cousin and sister to Sondra (see the entry for April 11). Unfortunately Harold was at work during our visit but Larry and the girls took great care of us all weekend. Angie, Jamie, Nicole and Casey were all over on Saturday and Sunday with their families. The kids all had a blast playing together. We went fishing in the pond on the back of their property and took the quads out looking for snakes – unfortunately we didn’t find any. Larry was able to help the kids locate a scorpion that they could keep as a souvenir. They, of course, wanted it kept alive and were envisioning it as more of a pet. Can you imagine the 6 kids having a pet scorpion tucked away in the RV? Not a chance in the world that was going to happen so we put it not so humanely to death before bringing it aboard our traveling home. We made some great memories on this stop and thoroughly enjoyed our visit. We definitely don’t get to see this part of our family enough but it makes us cherish the visits we do get that much more.

Nicole, Jamie and Angie

Larry on her V-Rod

Longhorn country

David, Jamie, Brendan and Chet

Casey, Larry, and Nicole

April 13 – Fredericksburg, TX – Walmart

Texas is a big state – a drive across West Texas will convince you of that. We put about 450 miles behind us during the day and Jim drove about 300 of those without stopping. It’s an interesting drive – a lot greener than I expected although this is likely due to the time of the year we are traveling. There is very little vegetation closer to El Paso and as you work your way east two things happen 1. the desert scrub slowly gives way first to mesquite – I think - and then to oak trees and 2. It gets humid. You can literally feel the humidity increase as you travel east across Texas.

Fredericksburg is a neat little German town in the hill country north of San Antonio and west of Austin.  We took up residence at the local Walmart for the night and did some window shopping in town the next morning. After getting a fantastic breakfast at the well-known Old German Bakery we headed east to Round Top.

April 12 - Carlsbad Caverns, NM - Walmart Carlsbad, NM

We made the short drive up from El Paso last night and stayed at Walmart. We had an entire section of the parking lot to ourselves with the exception of a few stray cats that the girls coaxed in with food. James and Zach had a hot sauce eating contest during dinner. They both consumed about 20 drops of hot sauce on a single chip at one shot before mom and dad called the contest a tie. These are the kinds of things you do to entertain yourself when you’ve got 9 people crammed into an RV for the night in the Walmart parking lot. If this sounds like fun, buy an RV and hit the road.

 We headed out early this morning to Carlsbad Caverns. I had been eyeing this destination since we left home and the gang in El Paso highly recommended it. We weren’t disappointed. There is a 1 mile walk down through the natural opening of the cave that takes you 750 feet below the surface through a variety of “rooms” and passages. In places it seems like the trail is almost straight down with switchbacks literally carved into the side of the cavern walls. Incredibly cool.
Evidently Carlsbad isn’t the biggest or longest cave system in the world but is known for being highly decorated. There are amazing rock formations of all sorts throughout the entire cave primarily caused by water leaching into the cave for who knows how long. Some of these formations look like icicles of rock – others like rock waterfalls. Then there are the countless stalagmites and stalactities. Surprisingly the cave was a comfortable 70 degrees. During the summertime there are thousands of bats that live in the cave- not the part open to visitors - and they create quite a spectacle when they come out to feed in a “mass ascension” each evening. I was thankful that the National Park Service has upgraded access to the cave since the 1920’s. At that time cave tourists were loaded into guano mining buckets – yes this does imply that they mine bat crap – who knew - and lowered them into the cave.

While here the kids did the Junior Ranger program that most of the National Parks have available to visitors. They each got a book and completed a number of lessons about the cave system. When we returned to the visitor center they got a cool patch. This program doesn’t cost any money once you’ve got tickets to the park and keeps the kids engaged during the visit. We all loved Carlsbad Caverns. I’d highly recommended a visit for anyone visiting the desert southwest.

Natural opening to the cave. The amphitheatre is used to view the bats as they come out to feed in the evening.

Descending into the cave.

They call this formation a Lion's Tail.

James and Zach entertaining all of us with a hot sauce eating competition.

April 11 – El Paso, TX – Ft Bliss RV Park/Bill and Sondra Watson

We stopped in El Paso for two days to visit Bill and Sondra Watson and their family. Sondra is my mom’s first cousin and we’ve seen them a couple times in Washington over the years. This was a great opportunity to visit them in El Paso. We thoroughly enjoyed our two days here as Bill and Sondra rolled out the red carpet. Sondra cooked huge meals for us both days which we really enjoyed and Bill ran us around town to help with errands. The kid’s played out in front of the house for the better part of the two days while Bill’s mom Granny – she’s 99 year old and lives with Bill and Sondra – looked on. Jim, Bill and I did a little maintenance on the RV and we enjoyed the Ft. Bliss RV Park that Bill arranged for us to stay in. Sondra’s oldest daughter Audrey and her family came to visit one evening and we all enjoyed meeting them. Sondra sent us on our way with a couple days worth of leftovers packed away in our fridge.

The whole family

Bill and Sondra

April 10 – White Sands National Monument, NM – Walmart Las Cruces, NM

We spent the night at the Walmart in Las Cruces and headed north to the White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Monument the next day. White Sands National Monument is a preserve that incorporates a portion of what are 275 square miles of brilliant white gypsum sand dunes. We rented sleds at the visitor center and headed off into the dunes to find some steep sand dunes. We all loved the dunes and thoroughly enjoyed playing in the sand and sledding down the dune faces. The boys and I all agreed that we would love to cut loose here with the motorcycles and quads. Imagine pulling in here with an enclosed trailer, dropping the back door, firing up the quads and storming the dunes. It would be awesome – unfortunately it’s probably a federal offense. Nancy made sure the kids were showered off before getting back into the RV. We loved the white sand but didn’t want to take any with us J



Uncle Jim and the kids sizing up the sledding hill



Jim showing the kids how it's done

Isabella taking the hard way down

View from atop one of the dunes

April 9 – Tombstone, AZ

On our drive across Arizona we made a quick stop at Tombstone. One of the most famous town of the old west, the town today – at least the old section of it – appears not too much different than it would have in the late 1800’s when the Earp brothers and Doc Holiday had a gunfight with the outlaw cowboys – the Shootout at the OK Corral.

Interestingly, Tombstone is only 30 miles from the Mexico border and we saw border patrol everywhere. They had a station where there where stopping all cars headed north. There was extensive imaging equipment set up that scanned every vehicle, drug dogs on the prowl and a hoard of agents asking all kinds of questions and searching all vehicles.

April 8 – Easter Sunday, Tucson, AZ – Prince of Tuscon RV Park

We pulled over for the night at a truck stop on the north side of Tucson before making our way down to visit Marty Alkin. Marty is a very good friend of Nancy’s family. He moved to Tucson about 10 years ago and we haven’t seen him in a number of years. We all attended church service in the morning and spent the afternoon relaxing and listening to his war stories. Marty is a decorated WWII veteran. He was on the beaches of Normandy on D-day and, unlike a lot of veterans, is more than willing to tell you about it. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with Marty. He is great with kids and, although he’s slowing a bit now that he’s 89, he hung out with us all afternoon and did dinner with us – Texas Roadhouse again – in the evening. The kids had time to hit the pool at the RV park in the evening and again the next morning before we pulled out to head east.

April 7 – Phoenix, AZ – Walmart Flagstaff, AZ

We stayed the night in the Walmart parking lot in Flagstaff. I also visited Best Buy and purchased a new head unit for the RV. I’ve been wanting to swap the old one out and it started giving me error messages creating the perfect excuse to upgrade. The following day we made our way down to Phoenix to visit our friends, Brian and Teri Kilgore. We enjoyed an afternoon at their house alternating between the air conditioned house and the 95 degree outside temperature. This is the first time on the trip where is really started getting hot – Nancy loved it! While there I installed the new stereo – we can finally play the iPod through the RV stereo!  Later in the evening we all headed to the airport to pick up Uncle Jim who decided to rejoin us. We all enjoyed dinner at Texas Roadhouse, one of our family favorites, before we set out for Tucson late in the evening.

April 6 – Grand Canyon, AZ – vacant lot in Kayenta, AZ

We drove west from Southeastern Colorado across northeastern Arizona headed toward the Grand Canyon. Although not too far from the beautiful scenery in southern Utah, this drive was as ugly as southern Utah was beautiful. Hard to believe. We stopped for the night in Kayenta, AZ parking in a vacant dirt lot in back of Burger King. Before I even had the RV parked we had 5 stray dogs circling looking for handouts. Before I knew it, the kids had the windows open and were throwing food out to them. We spent a restless night here. The wind was howling all night long. I took the dog out for a walk in the morning and literally got showered with sand – the wind was blowing so hard. After cleaning the sand out of my ears, we got back on the road happy to leave Kayenta and Burger King behind us.

Approaching the Grand Canyon from the east allowed us drive alongside 40 miles of the canyon before we actually got to Grand Canyon Village on the southeast rim. There were some great lookouts along the drive. At around 300 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest point and over a mile deep one thing that pictures simply can’t capture is the scale of the canyon. Simply put – it’s massive. Also, most of the canyon that we saw drops literally straight down thousands of feet creating sheer cliffs along the rim of the canyon. Needless to say we didn’t let the kids get too far away from us on this stop. I was hoping we’d see the deer and elk near the village that we had seen when visiting several years back but they weren’t around. If you haven’t ever been to the Grand Canyon add it to your bucket list – it is definitely worth seeing.

We stuck to the rim trail where they installed railings - believe it or not there's very little railing to be found here.

Nancy and Zach peering over the edge - I wouldn't get that close...

April 5 – Mesa Verde, CO – Mesa Verde RV Park

Interesting factoid - Mesa Verde National Park is the only national park dedicated to preserving the works of man. The Anasazi Indians lived in this area and from 500 AD to 1200 AD. They farmed the mountaintop mesas that sit high above the valley floor and lived in the naturally occurring shallow caves in the cliffs below the mesas. Beginning in 1100 AD, they started building enclosed living areas in the cliffs. Due to their protected location, these dwellings are incredibly well preserved. We toured Spruce Tree House which is the best preserved of the dwellings in the park. It was home to approximately 100 people each housed in small rooms - roughly 5x7’ - where, it is guessed, that 2-4 people slept. It is hard to imagine people living here during the harsh winters where the average annual snowfall is 144 inches. The blackened ceilings of the caves are testament to the fires that, no doubt, burned 24 hours a day during the wintertime. It is thought that the Indians abandoned the dwellings around 1200 AD due to an extended drought in the region.

As with all national parks, the visitor center here is first rate and offers a bunch of information on the dwellings and the Anasazi people. If find this sort of thing incredibly fascinating and enjoyed it thoroughly. The kids didn’t enjoy this stop as much – they couldn’t understand why they weren’t allowed to go running through all the rooms in the 1000 year old house.

Spruce Tree House - the indians climbed up from their houses to work the fields above. We could see rudimentary stairs carved into sides of the canyons.

Grain grinding stations built into the plazas in front of the dwellings

Kivas built underneath the plazas in front of the dwellings - these were covered and ventilation provided means to build a fire. These were community meeting places.

April 3-4 – Moab, UT and Arches National Park – Moab, UT

We took the scenic route from Bryce to Arches – over 300 miles of incredible scenery climbing to an elevation of 10,000 feet where we felt like we were on top of the world looking down at an incredible vista below. We passed through Capitol Reef National Park on the drive and found countless places to pull off along the road and take pictures. It occurs to me that the State of Utah for reasons unknown doesn't choose to spend money on guardrails. We've passed over some unbelievable roads at meaningful elevations the past few days and I don't think I've seen a mile worth of guardrail. There was one stretch of road several miles long today with drops on either side of several thousand feet. I hit this stretch, slowed to about 30 miles/hr, grabbed the wheel with both hands and looked straight ahead. Meanwhile Nancy is in the passenger seat explaining to me how steep it is on both sides of the RV - NOT HELPFUL. I had to apologize for my response later...

We rolled into Moab, UT in the early evening with the white-knuckle driving experience safely behind us. This is cool town – obviously touristy but not in an obnoxious way. It has a nice quaint downtown area with a number of cool shops and restaurants. As we drove through town it struck me that it seemed like every other car on the street was a Jeep Wrangler – some of them really decked out. I knew this town was known for rock crawling but I didn’t expect to see this. Well it turns out that it was Jeep Safari week – this is one of Moab’s two big Jeep oriented events during the year. Needless to say the town was hopping. This also meant no camping spots. After looking at some of the designated camping spots on BLM land and finding them full we retreated back to town and took up residence for the night on a city street. The whole family caught a movie – the Hunger Games – at the small theater in Moab. The next morning, after talking to one of the locals, we made our way out to Potato Salad Hill. This is a well known rock crawling trail. We spent about 2 hours here watching all sorts of jeeps make their way up the hill – some of them taking routes that had them going almost vertical seemingly defying gravity. The kids, of course, where hoping to see them come crashing down the hill. Although there were some very close calls, we didn’t see any carnage.

Arches National Park was on the agenda for the afternoon. We drove about 20 miles into the park seeing sights like Balanced Rock and Delicate Arch. It’s interesting that these national parks in Southern Utah are all relatively close together but the rock formations in each one are really different from one and other largely due to the fact that they were created by different means. Suffice to say that you don’t see the same thing twice here and everything you see is definitely one of a kind.

On top of the world - view from almost 10,000' on Boulder Mountain

View of Capiol Reef National Park




Balanced Rock - it's ineresting that they let you walk right up next to this thing

 

Delicate Arch

Going vertical...

We loved watching the wheelers

April 2 – Bryce Canyon National Park, UT – Bryce Canyon National Park North Campground

The drive up to Bryce was only about 90 miles and we made good time despite the incredible scenery. This stretch of road from Zions to Bryce to Arches/Moab has got to be one of the most beautiful in the country. We’ve all seen pictures of the rock formations that these parks were established to protect and preserve and the formations are indeed amazing. More amazing in person than the best pictures you’ve seen. This amazing scenery isn’t limited to just the national parks – there were amazing sights around every bend in the road.

We pulled in to Bryce Canyon National Park about 8 in the evening. I scoped out the visitor’s center and, upon my return to the RV, noticed that we had a flat tire. We weren’t going much farther this evening so we pulled into the North Campground and got a spot for the night. Bryce is at about 8000’ of elevation and there was snow on the ground in the campground. The temperature dipped into the 30’s during the night and the furnace in the RV got a workout. Always up for a challenge, I briefly considered changing the tire myself. I then recalled that I purchased the Good Sam RV Emergency Road Service shortly before we left on our trip. Good move – a call to the folks at Good Sam at 8:00 am the next morning got us a service truck within 20 minutes. I consider this a minor miracle as Bryce is not only at 8000’ elevation but it’s also very remote.

We took a short hike out to the canyon and caught the rock formations in morning’s light. The spires left standing in this canyon seem so intricately carved. The exposed layers of rock are amazing and very different from Zion. I’ve got a fear of heights and I really liked the fact that the walls of the canyon weren’t cliffs. The erosion occurring within the canyon created a natural amphitheatre where the eroded material created a complex series of ridges leading into the middle of the canyon. Walking down the ridges yielded some great views of the rock formations.

Bryce Canyon

More Bryce Canyon

Another view of Bryce

On top of the world - view from almost 10,000' on Boulder Mountain

View of part of Capitol Reef National Park